


The Realm of the Impossible

by Evalangui



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Genderbending, Genderfuck, M/M, Original Fiction, Sibling Incest, Sibling Rivalry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2018-10-15 04:26:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10550044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evalangui/pseuds/Evalangui
Summary: The Queen is dead and Lorax is ready to take his rightful place when an intimate betrayal leaves him with no choice but to surrender his throne or lose his only remaining family.At this unbearable crossroad, Lorax can watch the new Queen lead his country to a war that will destroy it or indulge his enemy's sole weakness: himself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the sake of clarity, you will notice the gender of pronouns (he/she) and nouns (woman/man) are at odds. So the main characters go by 'he/him' but call themselves 'princesses'. 
> 
> This story depicts a sexual/romantic relationship between similar-aged adult siblings. It also includes a graphic scene of non-consensual sex in chapter 1. After that, the consent is verbally provided but the situation makes it slightly dubious.

When they tell me my brother has risen against me, I call them liars. There is no doubt in my heart; there is no room for doubt. My mother has been dead but a fortnight and I am still to be crowned, it’s strategically the perfect moment for a coup, but it’s _Dzyer_. Dzyer, who is as different from myself in personality as we are close in blood and with whom, somehow, all our differences have mattered little in the face of the isolation of royal life. He might go out and I might stay in, but we both know he is coming back home to me. We both know nobody else can be as close, or as trustworthy a confidant as the other. My councillors should know better than to speak ill of my only family in a moment like this. 

“Your majesty,” Salaam insists. He was my mother’s closest friend and, while not noble by birth, I was raised to respect his judgement. “They speak the truth. The castle is surrounded by his troops.” 

“To protect us!” I almost scream, my voice rising high like a child’s. I am not given to emotional displays, it would not be appropriate for the heir to the throne. But my voice is naturally high and to be told such a thing, in a moment such as this, when the weight of all my mother’s expectations feels heavier and his support and comfort are forever gone... 

Lady Salaam’s lips press together and he motions to a waiting messenger. Barely more than child, she practically drops the missive on my hand before retreating. 

When I see the familiar handwriting, I almost drop it myself. Why would my brother write from right outside the castle instead of coming in to talk to me? I think that’s when I know.  But I read. I read because knowing is not believing. 

The words are so outrageous I am almost unable to comprehend their meaning. The surrender they demand unconditional, and no explanations of any kind are offered, no justification or acknowledgement of the profound wrongness of the act. It also makes it very clear that my loyal councillors have informed me correctly: the castle is surrounded by at least half of the royal army. _My_ army. Except my brother was given command of it two years ago, as he was always meant to be my right hand and war general. 

I might not be trained in the military arts, but I was taught to be calm during emergencies. I give myself not a second to process before sending people off to bring me more information. But it is Dzyer that I fight against, the one person who knows me best. If I ever doubted his insight or suspected him of not grasping the subtleties of command, I am proven mistaken again and again when one route of escape after another proves blocked. Every option impossible, every ally strong enough to aid me turned from me either by having become his or being too far away to be of any use at this time. While I mourned, he acted, and much can be accomplished in four and ten days. I realise then that he asked for no immediate surrender, that there is no time limit, that he knew from the moment he put pen to paper that victory was his. There is no need to threaten when one is master. 

Know thy enemy, they say. Nobody has to be urged to know their friends, but perhaps that would be wiser advice. I do not know how to compete with his complete knowledge of me when I have clearly paid so little attention that this has come to pass. I almost don’t want to find a solution. Even as a I search, in the back of my mind I cannot forget that this is no mere game or screaming argument. If I am to return fire with fire, I might never get to ask him _why_. If I manage to escape the castle and recoup, the fate that awaits me is to kill him for treason. _Treason_. How is it even possible for him to do this to me? And if I killed him, what of my treason? What of the fact that I was charged with his safety by my parents? May I take my vow back like he has done with his, and with it my love as well?  

I let time pass and I let my people look. I suspect Salaam—long hair in disarray and wearing in the same dress as two days ago—knows what I am doing, but he does not question me beyond urging me to rest. I lie down so that my body does. My mind won’t quit going over the fight... It’s _the_ fight now, the last one before this happened, although was that what tipped the scales? Or is it a matter of opportunity? Can something this complex be anything but well-thought and long-planned?  

Mother had been well enough then to make military decisions, and, unsurprisingly, Dzyer had disagreed with him. He had argued himself raw and mother had not given an inch. I personally saw no harm in giving Dzyer a company of soldiers or two to take south for reconnaissance; but when the Queen refused, I caved. And as soon as we were alone, Dzyer had turned on me for it, demanding my support. I had tried to calm him down, to explain that he had very little reason to think there was anything amiss in the south and that mother wanted him around because of his failing health. He had gone off into a rage, spiting more than talking, which was normal enough for Princess Dzyer that nobody had even come to check on us. He had accused me of obeying orders unthinkingly and trusting mother above my own sense and I had finally snapped back. I had tried to explain, like I had many a time before, that a kingdom divided cannot stand, that a Queen must have the loyalty of his heir if he is to govern effectively and that I needed Mother’s respect if he was to listen to my advice. There was nothing to be accomplished by raising his voice, as Dzyer insisted on proving time and again when either Mother, or both Mother and I disagreed with his opinions. I listened to him even when he did, I couldn’t ignore Dzyer and he often saw things out in the field that I missed from the palace. But just as I would not unthinkingly follow the Queen, I would not follow him, either, and so he never felt I listened enough. 

I knew this. But it never occurred to me that he would take matters into his own hands, that he would stop shouting and write instead. It never occurred to me that he could stop loving me for it. Because I could never stop loving him. We fought that day like many days before and, I thought, many days after, and I simply went to my rooms and tried to read till my heart quietened down and his words stopped echoing in my ears. I could have never predicted it. This. I don’t even know what this _is_. Is he really taking my throne? Does he intend to exile me? The ideas are so far from the realm of the possible that my mind slips away from them, unable to take them seriously despite all evidence. 

*** 

On the fifth day, I walk to the doors and open them myself. I ignore the guards posted at the ready by the entrance. They, for all they have turned against me, do not try to stop me. Dzyer is alerted by someone in the crowd and rides up a few minutes later in Rhina, his black stallion. He is not in armour, even though my rebellious sibling had one made for his smaller female shape. I almost wish he was shifted into the male bulk of the soldier he left in when I last saw him and not the princess. Somehow it would show what a stranger he is to me to all that can see. The woman that rides my way, straight and confident in his mount, auburn hair pulled by his delicate golden crown, is the brother I have spent countless royal parties glaring into silence. His eyes are still the deepest of blues, his skin still markedly more sunburnt than it’s proper in a royal. He is still Dzyer. But he wrote a letter that the Dzyer I know would never write.  

I pull myself together, I have a role to play. We all know it is women who rule with their heads, and not men with their brute strength and that is what Dzyer means to do: Rule. Except that Dzyer can look as feminine as he please and he is still on a horse, surrounded by an army of men and I am all alone, overpowered by the sword, not the mind.   

“Brother,” I say, in greeting, like nothing out of the ordinary is going on, using the same word I have always used to refer to my younger sibling. My calm is all I have, for all I feared and more has already come to pass. But I will not give up my dignity with my power. He thinks to make a spectacle of his prowess, I will make one of his betrayal. Nobody looking today will see a woman seizing a throne he deserves because he is able to manage it well, but a brute leading an army against his rightful queen. It is a small comfort, in the face of all I’m losing, but it helps me stand upright and meet his eyes.  

He must realise how we look because he quickly dismounts, putting us on level ground, “Brother.” 

I manage to repress my flinch at the word, I am entitled to the female word on account of my age and he had always used it before. It makes no difference, Dzyer does not need me to flinch to know he's hit a nerve. Both by the gender and by reminding me of my own lack of military training, the one thing that’s led to his victory today. 

Except that is not true. I could be trained in all the professions of the world and I still would have never seen this coming. I need him to be innocent so badly that my mind keeps finding ways in which I might be guilty, but he does not look angry. He simply looks certain.  

“Come in,” I say, gesturing to the castle doors, still open. I have thought the words through, and he might refuse to take the invitation unless I openly acknowledge his victory. But he doesn’t, maybe he is eager to get out of the cold, maybe he assumes my actions are more important than my words. I turn and head back, forcing him to follow after me, and he does. I don’t slow down when we walk inside but I start speaking, 

“I don't know how you are going to live this down,” I tell him ruefully and not quietly. I intend for others to hear. “Your reputation was already rather….” 

“I don't need to live it down,” he interrupts me, harsh. “I am the queen.” 

“Because I asked you in for a cup of tea in a cold night?” I ask. 

“Because you let my soldiers in.” 

“ _Your_ soldiers? Marcenian soldiers, obeying their general, naturally. But only because that general is the representative of their queen.” I turn to say this last to his face, he meets my gaze unwaveringly. 

And then I make a mistake, I lead Dzyer to my quarters. That's where we always fight, and it's my territory, so I think, stupidly, that I will be safe there and he, vulnerable. Unable to defeat his forces, I settle for defeating him. He had vowed to Mother for years, why would he refuse me the same courtesy? After all, I have always listened, even when I have not understood, even when I disagreed. 

“And they imagine their queen wishes to be besieged in her own castle?” he mocks. 

“Besieged? Nonsense! You are here to protect me, I'm vulnerable right now, uncrowned, in mourning,” I let the bitterness come out with the last word, and plop myself down on my settee. 

I can see it affects Dzyer, even as he makes himself ignore it. "No." 

"No?" I repeat, tilting my head in feigned confusion. 

"No, I am not backing down." 

I heave a sigh. "This really is not the time for games, Dzyer." 

He takes a step closer, fists clenched. "It's not a fucking game!"  

I stay where I am, like I don't mind having to look up at him, like I can't tell how close he's to hitting me. "What is it then?" 

"Good government,” he replies, his shoulders relaxing, voice evening out. 

"Your government?" I ask incredulously.  

He doesn't take the bait. "Yes, a better one." 

"Why would it be better for being yours?" I get up and make a show of unconcern by going to the cabinet and serving myself a drink of wine, pointedly not offering him any. 

"Because I know our people. I have been out there; that is what having a queen who is also a warrior is all about." 

“Is that so?” I sip, forcing my muscles to relax against the side of the cabinet. “Queens have not been part of the military for generations. It is true that I have not prepared myself for battle as Mother did,” I glance at him, and let my anger and pain slide out of my mouth with my next words. “I trusted you too much, expected way more of your affection than you are clearly capable of. Rest assured that it is not a mistake I will be making again.” 

I expect him to retreat at my attack, it is too harsh for anything else. But oh, how I have misunderstood Dzyer. Before I know what’s happened he has me pressed against the thick wooden surface behind me. _I_ _s it really him?_ I wonder, almost as confused by this as by his treason. If it wasn’t him, it would explain it all. Not only is he being unnecessarily rough when I have at no point tried to escape but he is touching me more than he has in years. I do not have anything in particular in mind when I squint to recognize the mind behind his dark eyes, I give no credit to stories of possession and faeries. But behaviour so bizarre requires equally bizarre explanations. The combination of his coup and the touching send both my mind and body into shock.   

Dzyer is not a physically affectionate person. Neither am I, but I permit myself the subtle touches someone of my class exchanges with close family and friends, while the extended company of soldiers has left Dzyer almost stoic when it comes to any touch that is not a blow, softened or not. In the last year, he last touched me after my mother died and only because refusing to return my embrace would have been the height of cruelty. I took advantage in my need for comfort and he allowed me the weakness. Remembering that touch now keeps me calm, even if his hands on me are anything but tender. 

“You require _proof_ of the extent of my affection?” he grits out, close enough I can feel his breath on my face, his hands tightening on my upper arms enough to bruise . 

“I have had enough of that, I believe,” I say. “Unhand me now, this is unbecoming.” 

His eyes narrow. “Perhaps you missed that you in no position to make demands.” 

“What position is that?” I ask, trying for mild, turning my head and meeting his eyes from the side. He looks wild, almost…  

“Defeated,” he leans closer to whisper in my ear, and I can’t help myself, I flinch, trying pull free of his hold. “At my mercy.” 

I make myself still. “Should I be afraid to be at your mercy?” I ask, disdainful. He can pin me to furniture if he pleases, we both know that is not where power resides. I know it like I know I breathe that he will not truly harm me, no matter how badly he wants the throne. I can understand he might, and that in his grief he has found some justification that allows him to have it…. It does not mean that I should be afraid, except he is talking like he expects me to be. I’m almost about to insist this is not the moment for mind games when he pulls back to find my eyes and says, “Yes.”  

Than he kisses me. Just like that, his mouth is on mine and his body is pressed close and I can only think that it doesn’t make sense. What is that supposed to accomplish for his reputation? Or his power?  

It takes me a few seconds to get over the idea and start feeling his hands caressing my back and neck, his teeth on my lip. I buckle as violently as I can in the reduced space between our bodies and the cabinet at my back, my wine cup tumbles to the ground with a clatter. It’s not enough, Dzyer is a good deal stronger than me and a trained fighter besides. I turn my face away, almost knocking our heads. “Stop this,” I pant. “Stop this instant!” 

“You've lost,” Dzyer grits out, like I’m being a bad loser about our jumping rope competition instead of refusing to let him ravish me. His hands have stilled, but even in female form it's easy for him to keep me trapped. 

“I have _lost_?” I repeat, dumbfounded. All thoughts of political maneuverers are gone now. I’m horrified, leaning back as far as I can, trying not to feel the heat of his body against mine. “What have I lost? What are you doing?” 

“What I want.” 

“No,” I say, incapable of any more elaboration, even I couldn’t say if my refusal is for his desire or my willingness to indulge it; or simply the reality of the situation as a whole.  

I try to pull away again, he holds me fast, digging his fingers into my arms. “You can’t tell me what to do anymore,” he says, calm, like my anxiety means nothing to him. 

I fold. I don’t know if he is playing a game, but if he is, it is not one I can bear to play. I look up at him, hoping to understand, hoping to be understood. “I have lost the throne! I know that, I opened the doors! But not myself! You may kill me, exile me, but you can't...!” I can’t finish that sentence. I can’t even think it. 

“I can,” he declares, and he is meeting my eyes. His are too close and too cold, not like he doesn’t care I’m in pain, but like he wants to see it. 

That is when I believe him, that’s when I finally understand there’s danger. And there’s nothing I can do… I decide to start breaking some rules of my own. Changing when I’m touching someone else feels almost worse than getting naked, and, in fact, my new frame tears the shirt I’m wearing when my shoulders expand, later I will find the cuts on my shoulders where the thread cut, but I don’t notice then. I buckle under his weight, dislodging him with my superior weight. When he staggers back a few steps, I go for the door, forgetting there is something else he has more practice doing than me: shifting. In a mere instant he’s got thicker arms surrounding me and my slight advantage vanishes. He hugs my torso and drops us both to the carpet next to the hearth. 

He tilts slightly to the side but regains his balance and I’m under him. I growl in frustration, but I only get my faced pressed further into the carpet. I have only made it worse by shifting, now the size difference between us is larger, as it’s Dzyer, who is suddenly not even having to struggle to keep me down. I can’t see his face, but I hear his pleasure. “You are wrong, sister. You _have_ lost yourself.”  

He lets go of my arms and easily catches my wrists against the floor when I try to pull myself up. I squirm, knowing it’s useless. I am a queen, trained to guide armies, oversee supplies, understand terrain, not do battle myself. Dzyer was not the heir, though, Dzyer could practice fighting with the common soldiers if it struck his fancy. Dzyer could shift into maleness and run around playing soldier as often as he wished and nobody would imagine it a weakness, just a game the princess played to be rebellious. He could join the army, even, as long as it was in a command position.  

He pushes my legs apart with one of his knees and I feel like I’m going to be sick. Something in my mind insists that this isn’t really happening, that my senses must be lying to me. I try to concentrate and use my elbows, but he just presses close enough that I’m immobilized. I don't want to hurt Dzyer. I don’t know why he is doing this, maybe it’s the grief driving him to madness. Maybe simply madness. He nuzzles the side of my throat. He will be sorry when he realises what he has done. I _know_ it. But then he bites my neck and before I know it, I am driving my head back against his face as hard as I can. 

It hurts. My vision blurs even as I hear him swear. He lets go of my wrists, but I can’t go anywhere with him on top of me. I manage to get an elbow somewhere soft but instead of retreating Dzyer comes back at me and pushes me on my back, my left leg twisted at an uncomfortable angle under his. His hand comes to rest on my throat, cutting out my air supply. I stop hitting him and sink my nails into his fingers, it must hurt but it’s not enough for him to stop trying to crush my throat. I thought exile was the worst that could come of this. I was so sure he wouldn’t hurt me, but he has already… what’s stopping him from finishing it? Then he stops and he kisses me, strong and invading and biting. I pant desperately for air, not caring that his tongue is in my mouth, just that he is stopping me from getting precious oxygen into my lungs.  

Dzyer moves back to find my eyes, and I find myself blinking up at him in a daze. Even if he wasn’t holding me down, I don’t think I could move. He watches my face, not saying anything; does he want to see me suffer? Or is he making sure he didn’t overdo it? My voice is rasping out of my throat when I ask, hopeless and desperate. If Dzyer can do this there is truly no hope. “Why?”  

Dzyer sighs and I feel it on my face. “You don't even know, do you? You don't realise that you've been the centre of everything all our lives.” 

“That's ridiculous!” My voice is a thread, unable to reach the higher registers my anger requires. My neck feels tender and it hurts to swallow. “I'm the firstborn, that's all!” 

“No, Lor, you're so much more than that. You were _everything_ to Mother. And I was... I was second. Always second. Well, it's over now. I want to be first. No, I _am_ first, I'm better than you at this: I have been out there and I know our people and their needs, and you believe every word you're fed by your commanders and governors.” 

“So you have the throne, and if you thought me unfit …” My voice breaks, I swallow but I make myself not struggle against his grip. I need to remain calm, I cannot afford to lose my mind when Dzyer has clearly lost his. I cannot afford for him to make a mistake from which neither of us will ever recover. The throne can wait; I have been waiting for years already. “To rule, that is very obviously solved. Why would you humiliate me like this?” 

“There you go again, thinking you are the reason for it all,” Dzyer says resentfully and leans in even closer. “Let me tell you a secret,” he whispers in my ear, warm and intimate and _wrong_. “I’m not doing it for you.” 

“What? You…” 

“Yes, sister,” he says. I would almost prefer for him to call me “brother” again, then at least I could tell myself he doesn’t know what he is doing, that he doesn’t know it’s me. “I am as hopeless to resist you as all the rest. But I will not let you control me any longer because of it.” 

“We need to talk…” I hazard to say, anything to gain some time, but Dzyer’s face hardens. “No, no more talking,” he firmly declares and kisses me again, hard, and angry, and not letting me get any air. He keeps a hand on my throat, his fingers digging into my jaw to keep my mouth open for his. I scrabble at his back and pull at his hair with my free hand, but I don’t have enough leverage to cause any real pain. He ignores my attempts and licks at the corners of my mouth. I shudder, then try to speak but I only manage half a syllable before he’s covering my mouth fully with his again. I hit his back with a closed fist and he pushes my arm down with his without letting go of my face. I’m scared, but fear itself is my worst enemy; I need to think. It hurts too much to push against him so I stop, trying to ignore what’s happening to my body and centre my mind.  

I can’t, the moment I stop struggling I discover another problem in my shifted body besides its unwieldiness. The unfamiliar skin I don’t know how to use to my advantage comes with unmistakeable proof of how aroused it is. I want to weep; my skin wants to be touched. I don’t even know if it’s Dzyer or the fact that I have not changed in years. I can’t help myself, I tense up again, as desperate to get away from what I’m feeling as from Dzyer. I want to change back to the safety of my own body. I am afraid, though, Dzyer’s hands are on the flat planes of my chest one minute and behind my neck the next, he is in a frenzy of touch the likes of which I have never experienced. And his words have given me very little reason to trust him. I cannot possibly put myself in a position in which Dzyer and I could have the type of… sex that… Oh, god, _sex, with_ _Dzyer_. I buckle, too desperate to care that my struggle is useless.  

A woman of my station should be above tears, a woman capable of leading a queendom cannot break down, but I don’t see a way to resist an impossible force unbent and remain whole. Dzyer’s knees are keeping my arms pressed to my sides while he bends himself in half to hold my face to kiss. I stop struggling, close my eyes and try to calm down, my neck muscles ache from pulling uselessly against my brother’s grip. _T_ _hat which bends, does not break,_ I think. After an eternity of stillness, Dzyer pauses. For a second I hope I have shocked him into thinking about what he’s doing, but he just takes it in stride, deepening the kiss, letting go of my face once more to slide his hands down to my neck, exposed by my half unbuttoned tunic. 

“This isn’t right…” I say, now that I can, “You don’t want to hurt me.” 

“I don’t?” Dzyer snorts against my chest and it stirs against hair that isn’t normally there, I have never had sex as a male, I can’t help but imagine what that mouth would feel like over my breast instead. It almost feels like inhabiting someone else’s flesh, almost like this isn’t real. “I’m pretty sure I do, I think it’s only fair.”  

“What are you talking about? I never…” Dzyer has opened the tunic up further and found a nipple. All the sensation normally distributed throughout my breasts concentrates now in that small piece of skin and I suddenly can’t breathe, can’t speak. I clench my teeth together to keep myself from making any sounds. 

Dzyer either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care because he licks around and then sucks before breathing his next words right over the damp skin, making an incontrollable shiver rush up my whole body. “You did. Mostly because you didn’t fucking _notice_.” 

“Please stop, I can’t...” 

“No,” says Dzyer “I don’t care anymore.” And without looking away from my face, he puts his hand on my hard cock over my trousers, as if he could feel the heat of it somehow. I scrunch my eyes shut. I don’t know what hurts more; the shame that he knows of my arousal, or the moan that escapes my traitorous lips when he tightens his grip. Dzyer makes a sound of his own, something like pleasure but closer to surprise. I open my eyes. My brother is looking down at my hips, instinctively raised to meet his touch.  

“You want this…” he breathes and I jerk so violently I hit my head against the floor. It hurts almost as much as my foiled need to stop him from looking at me. I cannot bear for him to continue to see me this way. I manage to liberate my arms but it’s the work of a moment for Dzyer to press my wrists down again and put one of his thighs between mine. The renewed pressure feels good enough to cry out and it catches me so suddenly, I do. 

I’m so distracted by the intensity of sensation in this strange form that it takes me a minute to realise his own cock is pressing against my bare stomach. His, unlike mine, is unhindered by clothing and it burns when it slips against the soft skin of my belly. He kisses my neck, licks my collarbones, and, as he speeds up his thrusts, bites my left shoulder hard enough to bruise. Except something is wrong with my nerves because it doesn’t _only_ hurt, it also, somehow, feeds back into the almost painful intensity in my groin.  

Turning my head to the side to avoid being kissed does little to help the situation, any part of me seems to be good to touch as far as my brother is concerned. Despite how much I fight him, the same skin I command to avoid his touch is also electrified by it. He lets go of my hands to put his inside my underclothes and that touch bounds me in place like no weight ever could. When I come I’m holding onto his shoulders and he is kissing my open mouth. 

For a few moments, I’m so dazed I can’t think straight, but then I realise that my hands are free. He lets me roll him over but not pull away, instead his arm grips my waist, pressing me against him so he can push against the skin of my stomach a few more times before spilling all over it.  

The feel of it is indescribable, sticky and hot and _real_. Burning both the skin it touches and my breath out of my chest. Now my brain is aware again of what just happened, I scramble away. Dzyer lets me. But there’s nowhere for me to go. Nobody to help me if he wants to do it all over again. I can’t even leave my rooms, his guards are outside. My breathing accelerates as I look around and find no options, no answers, not even a reason. I want to shout at him, rage… but I can’t breathe. Finally, my brain seems to process that there is a door that I’m allowed to open. I run into the bedchamber and close it behind me. I curl against it, hoping my weight will prove enough impediment if he tries to open it.  

He doesn’t try.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter two**  

 

I sit there and shiver and by the time I become aware of my surroundings again my cheeks are wet, my body having as little consideration for my desire for dignity as for any others. 

I check my sitting room is empty and I let myself change back. My clothes go next. I don’t want to be naked, but the need to scrub any remains of what just happened off my skin is too strong to resist. I use a washcloth to scrub off the worst of it and then find practical travel clothes. I go through my room slowly, methodically. There has to be _something_ of use, a way out...  

But ironically, my bedchamber is so well secured from outside assault that there is not a single way out of it other than the door. It would seem my predecessors were as naïve as me in matters of treason. I put my ear to the door and listen for any noise. When I hear nothing, I carefully open the door and peer outside. It’s all in vain, this room is as free of paranoia as my bedchamber or perhaps, I’m simply not equipped to see any ingenious means of escape. I feel hollow and cold, like the emotion that shook me to tears is gone somewhere outside of my reach. I return to my bedside and start going through my chests again in search of… well, anything. 

Whether the deficiency is with the world or with the seeking mind, I find nothing to aid in escape or attack. 

**** 

Food is brought in by my maid. She seems terrified, but I make her sit down and tell me about the situation outside.  

“We are all worried, milady,” she admits.  

“Has something happened? Has anybody…?” 

But there are no bold feats of loyalty to be expected when one gives up one’s castle. “No, no, everybody is fine,” Sora reassures me. “Lady Salaam is confined to his rooms, but everybody else… We… Princess Dzyer asked us to do our jobs and… to let him take care of everything.” 

“Why do you look so upset, then?” 

“For your sake, milady!” she says, indignant like only the young can be. 

“Oh, do I look…?” I glance down at myself, suddenly worried there is some sign of what occurred. I don’t see anything. 

Sora lowers her eyes, timid in a way quite out of character for the boy who insists on waking me singing every morning. “There… may I speak plainly?” 

“Yes.” 

“There are marks on your neck, milady.” 

I owe her no explanation, but I’m so horrified that she might guess that I give her one. “We fought. I was… I was upset, naturally.” 

“Of course, milady,” she replies, eyes still down. 

“Thank you for the food, Sora.” 

“Is there anything else my lady needs?” she asks, glancing around. 

I don’t need to look, I know exactly what I have been craving. “Some water for bathing.” 

I make her stay in the sitting room while I bath, needing to know there will be some sort of warning if I am to be barged into, even if she cannot be reasonably expected to stop anybody. I know I am giving away my unease with this request, but without Dzyer to trust, questioning Sora’s simple devotion is beyond me. I am glad I refused her help in the bath, though. Sora has helped me with the task often in the past, but I do not want anybody near my naked body just now. I'm glad for it when I see the bruises already colouring up around my arms. 

After tossing and turning for what seems like half the night, I almost regret refusing her offer to sleep in a cot next to my bed, as she does when I’m poorly. I pull back the covers and shift form long enough to push the heavy wardrobe against the bedroom door.  

At some point, I must drift off. The sun wakes me.  

 

*** 

   
For Sora to come in, I have to shift again to push the wardrobe aside. I'm oddly conscious of the fact that once I'm dressed, I won't be able to do it again if I don't want to wreck my clothing. It is all the stranger because I can't remember the last time I needed to shift before last night and in the space of a few hours, it seems like the strength of the heavier male musculature has become _necessary_. 

Sora brings breakfast and the extra pair of hands required to lace up the most regal of my tunics. I feel better in it. Both for its symbolism and how hard it pulls against my body from chest to hips, encasing me tighter than armour ever could. Her presence is also a welcome distraction from own thoughts and even darker memories. But I know I'm being childish: a servant's presence would not stop Dzyer from doing anything. It would mean Sora might witness my brother attacking me, though, and I need her gentle care and compassion too dearly for that.  

So I sent her away to her other duties, and I take a book from the shelves to pretend to myself that I am doing anything but waiting. The knock is brief and firm. It is not a servant's almost musical iteration. 

He is back. 

He waits until I manage to find my voice and ask him in, but remains leaning against the doorway. I do not say anything more, just concentrate on keeping my breathing even and my posture straight despite the way my pulse is roaring in my ears. 

He is more subdued, none of the anger he's been holding onto for so long visible in either his body or face. He only takes a quick look at me before fixing his gaze on my unlit fireplace.  

“You need to shift into male form,” he tells me, not quite an order, not quite a request. 

I balk at that, is he going to pretend nothing happened? “So you can assault me again?” 

He stiffens up at that. His voice is clipped when he explains, “So I can present you as my heir.” 

“Your heir?” I let my disbelief show. When I finally accepted he'd written the letter, that he'd meant to take the throne for me... I had imagined many things: but nothing like this. He expects me to stay and play heir to him? Does he truly think me so fearful that I will not undermine his authority? Or is this just to add insult to injury, one last humiliation to truly bring his victory home? 

“You didn't have a problem with me being yours all these years,” he replies evenly. But I know Dzyer, he’s biting his tongue to sound that rational. He is still not looking at me, and he's barely holding on to his emotions. 

For a moment, I hesitate. He changed the rules of the game yesterday: now the price for angering him is no longer his silence. But this is not simply about me: Marcen can't suffer for our sake, for whatever mistakes I made out of ignorance and Dzyer out of resentment.  

“I didn't decide that. You were named my heir when I was a baby.” 

“Well, I am old enough to make decisions for myself now,” he declares, with all the self-righteousness a teenager can manage to infuse into a single sentence.  

“What about me?” I ask, remaining calm. I'm the eldest, I'm the rightful queen."  

“You were going to follow mother’s instructions for the next few decades anyway. It will make very little difference that it’s me telling you what to do.” 

“I haven’t been following Mother’s instructions,” I grit out, keeping my voice from raising only by clenching my fists on my lap. “I have been working _with_ Mother to help our kingdom.” 

He snorts, glancing at me for once. “Is that so? When did you last oppose him on anything?”  

“I was his heir; I could not openly oppose him. In private, though—” 

“In private?” he repeats, rudely interrupting, “So you let him know you weren’t happy when he forbid me from going south? Am I to believe that did anybody any good?” 

“I chose my battles. I did not believe there was any harm in you going. But I also did not think it was unreasonable of him to want you close when he was…” I have to stop and swallow, looking away from Dzyer’s angry countenance. 

“What battle did you win?” my brother asks me softly. 

“Yours,” I confess. It hurts to say it almost as much as it hurt to do. I even promised myself never to tell him this when I did it. But I need the leverage too badly to hold onto my pride. 

“Mine?” Dzyer asks. 

“Mother did not want you to join the military,” I remind him. “But I could tell you needed… _something_. And it was your choice and we have very little of that as it is. So I insisted, and I argued that we needed someone with military training in the inner council. In the family,” I stop, pressing my lips together to keep myself from tears. I feel so stupid now. How could I have been so blind? So stupidly devoted that I imagined my devotion was returned? I have always known I could not divide my loyalty; that Marcen deserved it all. But my family was Marcen. They were safe. They were necessary and doing everything I could for them was the same as doing everything I could for my kingdom.  

Dzyer shakes his head, “Even that…” he starts but stops. I raise my eyes to his face, confused by the barely supressed anger in his voice. “Even that you would take from me?” 

“Take?” I repeat. All those years of keeping this secret, assuming he'd be grateful, and now... 

“Yes, take. Take my accomplishments and tell me they are only possible because of you!” 

“That’s not—That’s not what I meant. I did it because it was right and it _was_ something. I’m not asking for your gratitude; I am giving you the example you asked for. I have more if you want them!”  

“I do,” he grits out. 

“What about when I negotiated the treaty with Lambia?” 

He snorts. “Ten acres of useless land? What about when the taxes went up to cover the expenses of that expedition and we had to send our own army to the southern provinces to keep the peace?”  

It had been two summers ago and Dzyer had objected heartily to marching on our own, but military presence had proved enough to dissuade any subversives, just as our mother had hoped. I had relied on the queen’s experience and I had shown him the respect his position entitled him to, but I had never been quiet and much less compliant. Dzyer had simply never understood the value of negotiation and compromise to improve things. Years before he held a sword outside a training field, he had always favoured open conflict. Clear lines and goals. Not something to be found in a throne room or council chambers. It was exactly why he was so ill-suited to become queen. 

“Useless land?” I repeat. “Have you forgotten that we were on the verge of _war_?” 

“It was never that bad.” 

“It was that bad, and worse. I was in Lambia, since you value first-hand accounts so dearly! I heard the way they speak of us. It is still that bad, but my time there helped me understand them and reassured their queen that we could understand each without need for violence. The land was merely a gift symbolizing that understanding.”  

“It is funny, is it not? How all your supposed accomplishments are ones that cannot be proven?” 

I almost scream with frustration. It is not ‘funny’. It is exactly the way it’s meant to be. A diplomat’s job is to avoid conflict and encourage reconciliation. Except for marriages, political alliances are not flashy and manoeuvring must be kept quiet if the people being manipulated are not to find out. I cannot prove my innocence, but none of my supposed crimes seem to explain the severity of my punishment.  

“Is that what that was? Punishment because I didn't protect enough villages and forgive enough taxes?” 

“That was...” For the first time Dzyer shows uncertainty. “That was between you and me. It didn't have anything to do with the throne.” 

I know I won’t like the answer, but I must have some justification. Something, anything, to make accepting it a little easier. He's across the room and I feel every inch between us. Every time he moves, I want to get up and put some furniture between us. It is only the knowledge that it would be a pointless display of fear that keeps me on my seat. “Then why?” 

“I wanted to. I have wanted to for so long,” he says, and I grit my teeth to stop myself from flinching. “Once I kissed you, I just… I had tried to ignore it for so long. I almost believed myself and then all it took was a kiss and I knew it was a lie,” he continues. “I tried to ignore it and I tried… I tried other people, but I couldn’t.” 

He is said so much and so little that makes sense. “What?” 

“I tried whores, and nobles, and men, and women, and Andrel even.” 

“Andrel?!” The sole idea turns my stomach. 

“He can shift,” Dzyer says, like that explains anything. 

“You had sex with Andrel?” I repeat, incredulously. 

“I tried to..." Dzyer says, shoulders hunched and voice low. I almost wish he'd shift into maleness so I wouldn't need to feel _sorry_ for him while he tells me this. I know his face to well to miss the anguish in it. "I couldn’t.” 

“I am not surprised,” I sneer, there's little love lost between me and our cousins. “Was it because he can shift or because he is...?”  

“What difference does it make? It didn't work.” 

On reflection, it’s probably not my best idea to say, “You could have told me.” 

The sadness turns to anger at this, and he snapts at me, “To what purpose? To further humiliate myself? Give you a little more power?” 

“So I could help!” I get to my feet, forgetting all about my plan to stay down and demonstrate I don't need to look down at him to show him his place. 

“Help how? Sleeping with me?” he asks. “I would have never done that to Mother.” 

The thought of what Mother would think of this is like a dagger twisting in my gut. I deny it at once. “No! Help you understand the inclination, surely there's some reason—” 

“There is a reason,” he interrupts, suddenly furious. I tense, frozen in terror. That's how he sounded when... “ _You_ ,” he says and just as suddenly he sounds dejected again, like all hope has vanished from the world. “I told you... you are the centre of the world.” 

I cannot think what to say to that, this time said so differently, resignation coming through in every word. Even now my heart aches for him, his pain echoing in me, leaving me feeling helpless and vulnerable. Even now, with what he’s done. 

“It wasn't worth it,” he says before I can think of anything. “I was angry, and I wanted to hurt you, but the way you looked… I will never apologize for taking your crown, but I am sorry for this, I will... I never want to think of it again and I don't think I'll ever be able to stop,” he is looking down and if I know him at all, the half apology is sincere. Be that as it may, I cannot forgive him, so I say nothing. After a few moments of silence, he turns and leaves.   

   

****** 

 

I am thinking over my still unread book when he returns some time later. Once again, he stays by the doorway, door propped open. Is he doing it for my benefit, or his? If he were to try to close that door, I would have little chance of stopping it. He doesn’t look at me, just announces, “You need to find appropriate attire for the coronation, male attire.” 

“I don't have any.”  

Something about the way I said it must tip him off that I mean it. His gaze slides my way for the briefest of moments before he looks down. “You don’t have any clothes for your male body… at all?” 

“I never shift, I don't like it,” I wonder if he assumed I only shifted when he wasn’t around. 

“What are you talking about? We are shifters, it’s natural. Is this about...?” he gestures between us, eyes flickering all over the place. “I won’t do it again.” 

I don’t bring up how very little reason I have to trust him right now, but I make note of the implication that it matters in which form I am.  

“That was the first time I shifted since they let me off fencing lessons,” I explain. How is it even possible that he’s _missed_ this about me? Of course, I have missed so much about him. Maybe we don’t know each other at all. 

I never even understood why I needed to shift to learn to swordfight. But the fight earlier has ensured that I am now very aware of how very little command I have of that body and therefore; how underprepared I am for any physical confrontation.  

It is for this very reason the royal line is made of shifters: we are meant to be the woman with the strength of mind and the man with the strength of body in one person. The perfect balance that might never be defeated. Except that for all we do not need choose one over the other, everybody else does and since the mind is undoubtedly superior, so is the female form that allows its greater expression. Because their strength must be beyond question, queens are meant to show no fear and to have no need of the strength of their bodies. Or at least, it had been an effective argument when convincing my mother to ignore the traditional physical training. Particularly because Dzyer seemed inclined to be my other half in that arena. Something I had pointed out to Mother with ulterior motives but that I had believed stupidly and wholeheartedly. But Dzyer is not my half, he is a person in his own right. A person I had not thought to shield from, either in body or in mind. 

“That cannot be… healthy,” he tells me. It has clearly never occurred to him to _be_ my half or for me to be his. He is whole and I am in pieces. 

“I haven’t noticed any problems,” I bite back, unable not to resent him. 

“I never knew…” he says wonderingly. Then he shakes his head. “We will have some made.” 

I sigh and stand to look at him. I don’t like having him looming over me, and I am too tired to play the undaunted princess. “What do you expect me to do? Afterwards?” 

“Advise me.” The words are clearly rehearsed. I don’t miss that he is only referring to my role as heir, nothing regarding our personal relationship. He is offered an apology but no compensation, no accommodation. Does he believe that regretting it will make me believe I’m safe? 

“Do you think the people will just accept this?” I challenge, focusing on the job. I can’t even begin to untangle my brother’s tangled psyche. 

“They will because you will be by my side and support me. There was no fight and there needn’t be one. There is not going to be one,” he corrects himself, meeting my eyes for the first time. He is serious and intent, and he is not backing down. I know the look, it rarely ends well for whatever or whoever is getting it. “I am willing to give you as much power as Mother did. More, even. I will need you here for the time being to stabilize the situation.” 

“And then? You are younger than me, are you planning to die in battle?” I ask, disdainfully.  

Up to this point his joining the military, even as a general, has been the biggest disagreement we have ever had. I could never understand why he needed it, why his love for sport had turned to violence. Even as I saw how true it was, how he shone in armour, not simply without but within, eyes bright and feverish with a passion nothing else excited. Mother wouldn’t have given in, but I had. I loved him too well to keep him caged even if keeping him caged would have kept him safe. With me. 

“After that...if you want to marry or go abroad as an ambassador. I know you would not bring civil war to our queendom.”  

He _knows_ , he says. Oh, and how it rankles that he knows me so well and values me so little. He nods, as if my silence is answer enough, and abandons the doorway. 

 

*** 

 

I kneel at his feet, trying not to be sick. I knelt in this room before my mother not so long ago and I swore fealty to him and our queendom. My mother is dead. Our queendom stands. It’s all I think of as I bend my head for the crown I have been wearing for years instead of the one I was promised. 

He asks me to swear, and I swear. Is there any magic in these words from the times when magic was in everything? Or is it just in my mind, where I knew my word was my bond before I understood little else? It feels real, it feels like defeat, and surrender. And once surrendered a vow might never be taken back. He bids me stand by his side, and I do.  

I let them all see, our cousins, visiting nobles and servants—not longer so skittish and unsure. But I do not look. I let my gaze slid right through them, into a memory, the way I learned to do during boring state functions in which I just needed to stand around and be seen. It’s harder now, when I need to avoid thinking of both Dzyer and my Mother yet find pleasant occasions to recollect, but when my life proves too painful a subject I turn to the histories. There’s many a betrayal in those pages, but also great alliances and plots so fiendishly clever even remembering they were accomplished gives me a shiver of pleasure. 

The celebration goes on for hours, and more than once I feel my coolness start to fail me. I can hardly bear to look at Dzyer, crown shining over his auburn hair styled into the same wispy ringlets he always complained about growing up. I guess this crown is worth the discomfort of dressing up. But it’s not just the stabbing fury that keeps me turning away from my brother, but the fear that it will overpower me and twist my mouth into a grimace that would reveal to all the extent of my deception. A deception I have sworn on, committed to. A deception I cannot take back, only make worse by exposing. Among strangers or near strangers, I meet Essire’s eyes. My cousin is wearing an immaculate salmon gown, simple yet arresting on the soft curves of her figure, but it’s her eyes that surprise me; focused and determined, they are not the eyes of someone enjoying a party. She nods at me and I understand what she means: you are doing well, you can do it. I haven’t talked to Essire in years, but she knows me too well to imagine I can hide my discomfort behind the simple mask of curved lips and neutral look that others will be unable to glean anything from. I nod back and turn, finding another drink and another old man to whom I can pretend to listen ramble to pass a little more of this interminable evening.  

By the time I am allowed to escape back to my rooms, I am desperate. But I do not run. I cannot allow myself that much, servants have eyes and ears, after all, but I truly do not know if I am capable of letting my body go in such a way without dissolving into tears as well. So I walk, firm and purposeful, as if I was still mistress of all that surrounds me, as I still knew my path without question or hesitancy. 

Behind closed doors, I tear the strange clothes from my strange body before ordering a bath. I ask Sora to guard me again. I’m scared still, and I wonder if I will always be while I remain here. My mother has been dead for a three and thirty days, the traditional mourning period, and his crown has found a new head; the world keeps going. What does it matter to anyone but me if the head is not the one that was promised? 

 

*** 

 

Maybe I needn’t have worried; after the coronation, Dzyer takes to spending long hours in the council rooms and never seeks me out. In fact, after some days have passed without our paths crossing at all, I realise he is actively avoiding me. The surprised look on his face when I first walk into an ongoing council meeting confirms my suspicions. 

“Brother,” he says after a moment. He always called me “Sister” before, when I was the heir and he was the princess. He could do so now if he was kind, and nobody would object. Not anybody in our council, certainly. But Dzyer did not get to be queen by being kind, I suppose. 

“Why was I not informed?” I demand, rather curtly. My Mother would have sent me away for using that tone with her. But of course, not only Dzyer is used to irritating me beyond civility but he sees little point in courtesy. 

“We are discussing military training, milady,” Lady Salaam says placatingly. 

“That sounds fairly important to me,” I reply, unforgiving. I do not resent Salaam’s easy acceptance of the new queen, but I’m angry with my brother for promising me a role in his court and then taking even that from me. 

“You never attended these meetings with Mother,” Dzyer replies. 

“Ah, but _you_ need my advice, milord,” I remind him, relishing using the masculine. 

“I am a new queen. I need all the good advice I can get,” Dzyer demurs with a smile, and he is right, what does it matter if he lets me call him “milord” when he is _queen_? 

I swallow my rage and take a seat. 

  


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

Attending council meetings is an exercise in frustration. Not just because Dzyer provokes m—which he shas a natural talent for—but because now that he is queen, there is nobody to curb his be stubborn streak. He dismisses my suggestions as easily as he does that of other councillors. Even Lady Salaam often cannot find a way to phrase his expert advice convincingly enough for our queen’s ears. 

I have no choice but to put up with it, since every time I try to see Dzyer alone I’m foiled by servants that claim that they have been ordered not to disturb him. After council meetings when I have managed to remain inwardly calm enough to want to face him; he dismisses the council to speak privately with Salaam. I do not think he would have me escorted out, but the one time that I make as if to stay last; he glances up and call the treasurer back to ask him to explain some obtuse matter to me. Lady Astel and Lady Unira have also lingered and in the end, I am forced to do as the queen requested or cause a scene in front of the very people whose support I need the most if I’m to hold any power whatsoever in my own realm. 

Somehow, the servants I post never manage to inform me when those meetings are over either. And I cannot wait around the corridor like a messenger; I might not be wearing the crown I should, but I am still wearing one. 

And then Dzyer starts speaking of conquest. Border skirmishes back and forth, he claims, are a waste of time and lives, we should crush our enemies and be done with it forever. I point out how unpredictable warfare is. He sneers at my lack of military knowledge. In the end, I can’t do more than talk and if he decides not to listen, that is his prerogative as queen. I do talk and he does not listen. His generals are glad for the opportunity and Andrel —who’s had barely any military training as far as I know— attends the next council meeting to offer his opinions. 

But of course, there is always something one can do. One might not choose to pay the price if it's too dear, but choice rarely completely vanishes. There are very few instances in life in which we truly have no control at all: most people just prefer to comfort themselves that way rather than accept their own weakness.  

As soon as the meeting ends, I excuse myself and go wait in his rooms. I have so far avoided them in my quest to talk to him alone. Whatever he promised, private chambers do not seem the place to _talk_ anymore. But war is too dangerous a game to let him play. No matter who wears the crown; I will always be responsible, both for our queendom and for counteracting Dzyer’s recklessness. 

The rooms are empty. They are not the royal suite, but the set of rooms Dzyer has occupied his whole life. I go through the drawers, hoping he'll know I was snooping even though it's stupid to anger him. But maybe I need the fine wood of a board of War to remember this is my little sister's room, a place to play and chat and be silly together without fear of anybody judging us for it. My pulse is not as steady as I would like. It does not seem to matter that it was in my own quarters where it happened; Dzyer’s presence is everywhere to my expert eye: the carelessly folded blanket, the half written letter on his table, his old crown on a cabinet. I pretend my hand isn’t shaking when I close the door behind me. I force myself to breathe through it, my every cell vibrating against my determination not to flee, my hearing so acute I imagine steps in the corridor twice only to realise that it’s my imagination when I stop to listen closely. I take a chair and sit straight on it, a perfect princess pose. I need the mask more than ever before; for I know I have to do everything in my power to stop this madness. Everything is quite a lot to ask, even if it’s me doing the asking.  

Dzyer is not happy to see me. No sooner he opens the door, he is telling me to get out.  

“No,” I say, clenching my hands on the arms of my chair. “Not until you listen to me. You _asked_ for my advice.” 

Dzyer growls and closes the door a little too hard. “And I listened to your advice. I did not promise to follow it,” he says. “It would quite defeat the point of being queen.” 

“This campaign is too sudden! We have no proof their queen has broken the treaty!” I stand up, forgetting propriety. 

Dzyer refuses to be cowed, by either my closeness or my tone, though. “Don’t be absurd, as if he would be that obvious: we will never have enough proof. What we do have is a fraying border and escalating attacks.” 

“Yes, and some dead people. If we go through with this, many more _will_ die. Is a clear border worth that many lives to you?” 

“This is a queendom, brother.” He looks me straight in the eye with no difficulty now and I hold his gaze, using my anger as a shield. “Without stability it cannot grow and without growth it will shrink. You know well what they think of us in the north. Can you imagine what would happen if they invaded?” 

“Why would they invade?” I ask, mystified. Lambia and Marcen have a history of hostility and border skirmishes, but neither country has ever tried a full on invasion. 

“Because their crops are not good this year, or their tournaments are boring and their knights need practice. Perhaps because we refuse a marriage offer.” He gives me a pointed look at this, even though _he_ now makes a much more attractive prospect. “Any reason will do, when the intent is there, any particular will do to set it off.” 

“What possible reason do you have to believe this? How does a pond mean there’s a flood coming?” 

“One pond does not, several in close proximity do mean it has rained in excess. I have been reading the reports for years, I know how many more attacks there have been in the last three months.” 

I breathe out, force my shoulders to relax. “I believe you, but I do not think open war is the solution. I think we need to be clever. Collect information, find vulnerable…” 

“Lorax, the pattern indicates very soon there will be daily attacks. Espionage takes too long. It’s just too late to be cautious…” 

And just like that once _again_ my sensible advice is dismissed for the urgency of his blood. I feel my own boil and I know I’m flushing to a very unfavourable shade. I am only able to do what I do next because I am stupidly angry, but it is an idea born in the darkness of my bedroom, after countless useless council meetings. Born in equal parts of desperation and rage, of the betrayal itself and the injustice of being once again relegated to a secondary role after years of waiting to take my place as queen. Years of maintaining the delicate balance between doing good and keeping Mother happy enough that he would not take the power to do good from me. And now _Dzyer_ has taken it instead. Dzyer, who has no claim superior to my own or experience to justify his arrogance. Dzyer, who promised me he would not sideline me. 

The idea is particularly horrifying because of its effectiveness. I know the power I hold and I despise it; but I do it nonetheless because there is no power I would not use to keep Marcen safe. 

I push him against the wall and kiss him. As he kisses me back, I feel his body mould itself to mine, immediately and without question, as if it has been waiting. Then he pushes me forcefully away, his voice breaking when he asks, “What are you _doing_?” 

“I can’t make you listen, can I?” I pant, his taste in my mouth still. “What if I make you a deal?” 

“Are you trying…are you trying to use this against me?” he sounds stunned. And hurt. _Betrayed_. In a way, it feels good that he knows what it feels like. But mostly it hurts to do, it hurts to see his face and it hurts to think of mine. But for the first time in ages, he is seeing me, not someone who is interfering with his plans but _me_. I needed his attention and I finally have it. Now he can just _see_ that this is so important that I am ready to do something like this if I need to… “I don’t have anything else, Dzyer, you have left me with nothing else.” 

He stares. Not even he can deny that he is put me where I am, can he? I press my tongue to the top of my palate and try not to let my fear show. I keep my limbs relaxed by tensing my torso. Inside my chest, my heart beats like it wants to escape almost as badly as I do. But I keep my gaze on his so he knows I’m serious. He struggles, but I expect him to win. He is the strongest person I know, always determined, always decisive. And then it happens, his eyes drop from mine to my mouth and he nods instead.  

I keep staring, disbelieving now, and see his stance relax, perhaps in relief, perhaps in surrender but indubitably announcing his intentions. I remain paralyzed too long, long enough that he pulls at my arm, brings me back to lean against him and finds my mouth with his. I tremble in his arms and close my eyes, bracing myself for the hard bruising kisses he forced on me before. Instead, he holds my face and kisses me softly: alternating between lightly brushing his mouth against mine and catching my bottom lip between his and tugging to get my attention. He needn’t bother, he has all of the attention I can spare from the rush of my own thoughts. I thought he'd see how desperate I am, how willing I am to sacrifice myself to... I didn't expect it to feel like this: like all the tenderness I have been denied, like all the sweetness and comfort I am not supposed to need. 

I let him kiss me. I let him drop his hand from my face to my waist and bring me closer still. I let him until he pushes with his mouth and swipes his tongue between my lips. Then I don’t just let him, I kiss him back. It's strange because it doesn't feel that different from any other kiss. The wet, soft intimacy of letting another person so close, of tasting what they taste... And yet, his scent, the familiar rhythm of his breathing, the very weight of his existence, make it impossible to forget who is brushing his fingers down my neck. I pull back, and he allows it, freezing in place, eyes darting to mine with fear written in them. He is truly sorry, I realise. I had known it before, but now I believe it. 

I have changed occasionally since the coronation--mostly to prove to myself I could--but not today. And Dzyer has started shifting into maleness less, as if he's slowly becoming aware how strange it is for other people to see their queen in battle form. So we are almost of a height and I can see his face. _My brother's face_. I take a step back before I know I mean to, then glance up to gauge his reaction. I offered him this, and my word is one of the only things I have left now. But... 

"I'll give you a month," he says, too fast, and I look up at his face. "I won't do anything about it for a month unless you ask me." 

I stare. A month isn't that long, truly. "But will you do what I ask of you?" My voice comes out rasping. 

He hesitates, then says, "Within reason. I'm not doing anything that will stop me from sending troops after the month is over." 

I nod. Then lick my lips, looking away. It does not seem likely he will give all that for a mere kiss. "What would that..." 

He exhales sharply at that. "Anything," he says at last, like the word is being torn from his throat. "Just... just let me touch you. And if it's too much... I will stop. If you ask me, I'll stop." His arm are crossed and he's gripping his own wrists. His eyes are lowered, but I can see the unhappy downturn of his plush lips. And then I realise something that should have been obvious: I can't watch my brother as we do this. 

"Shift," I say. No explanation or politeness. 

Dzyer glances up for a second, then nods and starts fumbling with his clothes. I almost reach out to help him. But then stop myself: I want to be as far as possible from the older sibling who helped him undress as I possibly can. And maybe his clothes have been designed for this because the dress' corset opens up widely enough that he could shift while still wearing it. He doesn't though, he pushes it down his hips. I look away, even though his underclothes cover him up still.   

"Should I help you with yours?" he offers, and I realise he's done. I glance at him for only a moment: to my relief, he's kept the white shift on, even if it's stretching oddly against his wider shoulders. 

I turn around for him to unlace me, not speaking, not thinking of when Dzyer’s hands last undid the laces of my dress. Not remembering how unthinkingly I requested it when Sora was away fetching something, how unconcerned I had been pushing my hair out of the way for him, how completely blind to what it meant to him. And he does it, not slow, but not clumsily either and not touching me more than he ever has before. 

The moment it’s done, I pushed the dress down and I let myself shift. I know, intellectually, that my male skin is still mine, but it does not feel that way: the larger size, the more abundant body hair, the way things feel when I’m like that—smells muted, but sounds sharper, and my skin so sensitive it’s like it’s made anew. It just makes everything strange and distant. I'm afraid it won't last, that soon I'll get used to it again—and it took me years of not shifting at all for it not to feel like my body anymore. 

Dzyer doesn’t speak, but he touches my elbow with the tip of his fingers for a couple of seconds before he slides his arm around me. It's bare now and feels warm through the thin cloth of my underdress. I breathe out and try to turn, but he just presses me into his embrace, arms powerful and immovable for a second before he loosens his grip. “Let me?” he asks. 

But it's too late, my heart is already beating too wildly. I need... I push my elbow back against him, not hard but serious. Dzyer makes a pained sound, then opens his arms so I can step out of them. 

We don't speak for long moments. And then he does. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel like... like you couldn't move. I didn't think..." 

I raise a hand, still facing away. "Stop." 

And for once in his life, he does. I wonder if he will realise how wrong this is, if he will offer to give me a month without asking me to go through with it. But the words never come, and I realise they won't. Can he really need this that badly? Is the idea of bedding me so irresistible that he's somehow forgotten that I only offered out of desperation?  

But it doesn't matter. I did offer, and I want that month. I _need_ to be listened to about Marcen, or there isn't any point to me still being here at all. I don't need to be queen in name, a true queen would give anything for his people. 

That is what mind mind must be on. "Come back," I ask. 

He hesitates, but slowly approaches, until I can feel the heat of his body behind me.  

"You can touch me," I say, as neutrally as I can.  

And he does, he puts a hand on my hip, the other on my neck before pushing his face against the other side and planting a single kiss there. I shudder. I close my eyes and think of how I am going to get a spy to the border, someone whose information I can trust. We have plenty already, of course... Dzyer hand slowly travels from my waist to my belly, and slower still between my legs. He pauses when I tense up and I make myself lean back against him to signal I welcome his touch. He takes hold of my cock through the soft cloth of my shift. I’m not hard, not this time, it helps that I am not giving him that.  

But of course, Dzyer never makes things easy for me and my indifference cannot last against the slide of his hand, soft one moment and tight the next. I am pushing against his hand before I know it and Dzyer drags me back against his own hardness, leaning forward to lick and bite at my neck and shoulders. I shudder against it and I feel his other hand on my chest. He open some of the buttons to get his hand on skin and then draws gentle circles around the sensitive nipple area. They grow hard, and maybe I've made some noise, because the next time, he pinches the left one and I arch, grunting. He does it again and I whimper, but as before, it isn’t just pain, not when the pleasure rises from the silky feel of wet sticky cloth on my leaking cock. I struggle, unable to decide what I want, but Dzyer just holds me tighter. I realise that my movements have the unintended effect of rubbing my buttocks and back against his erection.  

I suddenly can feel his seed on me from last time, burning and clinging… I shudder, and almost step out of his embrace. But no… If I want it to be over, both of us need to reach our peak. I don’t want to see his face so I don’t try to turn, but I put my hands to his thighs to hold him close. He groans, just at that, a touch that can surely produce no physical pleasure has him trembling against me like he’s been hit by lightning. I tilt my head back to lean on his shoulder, eyes still closed. I don’t have to ask: his hand speeds up and so do my hips; his cannot but follow. I should know it from last time but the heat of his release surprises me once again, it’s so close to mine that the sensation on my lower back and inside me seem to fuse together in a wave of pleasure so overwhelming that only his arms around me keep me from being swallowed by. If he let go of me now, I would fall.  

Maybe we are keeping each other up because his hand leaves my groin and settles on my hip, mirroring mine. I allow myself a minute to catch my breath. He is warm and quiet and under the pungent smell of sex, there is still the familiar smell of him. I straighten and once again his arms tighten, but he lets go fast enough when I take my hands off him. I step away, keeping my back to him and looking around until I locate a washbasin. But it is pointless, of course: the shift is ruined with both his release and mine. I put the cloth back in the basin and turn towards the bedroom and the bathing chamber. I don’t mean to glance up and meet his gaze, but once I do, I can’t look away again. My mouth is so dry I couldn’t speak if my life depended on it, but maybe my face gives something away because he sounds angry when he tells me, “You have a month to find an alternative solution to the border problem.”  

He then turns and walks into his bedchamber without another look in my direction. 

 

***  

I took one of Dzyer's shifts from his dressing room, and put my dress back on—hiding how loose the corset was with a shawl to hurry back to my chambers. But I also brought back my shift because the last thing I need it is for my soiled undergarments to be found in my brother's bedroom. 

I dress and bath and I lie in bed, thinking. Come morning, I have no viable alternatives and a month is starting to seem like nothing. He said he was willing not to simply listen to my plan, but to put in motion—as long as it didn't interfere with his own. 

I attend the council meeting and I insist our reports are so few they are bound to be biased. 

“Our reports have been provided by the same reliable operatives for years.” Councillor Tyrias points out. 

“How do we know that they are reliable?” 

Lady Saalman nods, interested. “Indeed.” 

Dzyer answers, “Because their reports do not contradict each others’.” 

“Can they not talk to the others about their reports? If they report about the same areas they surely are close enough to _talk_.” 

“That would presuppose they know of each others’ existence.” 

“I would not put it pass a spy to have information they should not have,” I say mildly. 

Dzyer hesitates, or perhaps he is bothering to think about what I’m saying for once. Maybe just so he has a good reason to keep his gaze trained on the table even when addressing me. He has not looked in my direction even once since I walked in. “So you propose we engage yet more spies to find out if our current ones are lying to us?” 

“No. I don’t particularly care if they are or if they are covering for each other. I suggest we engage more spies to verify their information. If they are not proficient at their jobs, it will come out soon enough.” 

He glances at me in surprise, then quickly averts his eyes. “Well thought,” he says and anyone who did not know might almost think he means it. “I will see to it.” 

“I wish to assist you,” I interject, at which he is clearly not pleased.  

“You are no master of spies, brother,” he says, bordering on disrespectful. 

“Neither are you, my queen, but we all learn what we have to.”  

 

*** 

 

“You can have a spy,” he says later, when he finds me in his anterooms once again but wearing male attire. I wonder if he would take it back if I turned away now, but I don’t need to wonder what would happen the time after that. I don’t need to speculate on who a queen wants to see less than the lover that spurned him, or whose opinion he will assume to be wrong. I step up to him and kiss him. It’s only the second time that I have done this but it’s easy enough when he responds so eagerly. He doesn’t rush, but he kisses me hard and I give him back as good as I get. I might not know how to be his lover, but I have a lot of experience not letting him win. 

He brings me flush against his body, trapping my arms momentarily to push my shirt off my shoulders. I don't struggle, but I have to think about it. Once my arms are free again I gingerly settle my hands on his forearms. But it doesn’t work for long, his hands are moving too much for his arms to remain a stable handhold so I transfer my hands to his neck. I kiss him harder, trying to deprave myself of air so that the burning on my chest distracts me from the equally incredible and terrifying sensation of his hands opening my trousers. It doesn’t matter how scared I am, though, my body is primed for it, unrepentantly eager even before he brushes against me. When his hands cup my buttocks and press me against his cock, I startle so badly I would fall if he wasn’t holding me; as entwined as we are, I cannot ever fall without him catching me. 

He is still kissing me, but the shock has pulled me out of the daze of pleasure I was lost in and suddenly, I’m afraid again. I try to pull back and he resists letting me. _He promised..._ I push again, harder this time. “Just…” His hands tighten around me for a second too long before letting go. I step back too fast, almost loosing my footing, but he doesn't try to catch me. I don't look at him, just keep my gaze on the floor, trying to catch my breath and get my thoughts in a semblance of order. 

“Are you taking it back?” he asks, finally, his voice sounds like he swallowed glass. 

“Will you give me a moment? It is no small matter to me!” 

“It isn’t?” he asks, seeming honestly puzzled. He's got dark hair on his chest, just a little, but it's especially odd because I've known his body for so long and only now am I realising that I have never seen him even modestly undressed as an adult. “But you have done this before.” 

I stare, incredulous. “How is that meant to have any impact on its importance?” 

“I don’t know, do I? I thought it was different for you, because you have…” He gestures, I’m surprised he is playing coy, but then I realise he might not want to specify—either to avoid giving offense or because he does not want to think of what I have done and he hasn’t. 

I give up and just tell him, “It is different, Dzyer. Every time, and now it’s _you_.” 

He goes from resentful to abashed, which on his face is not that far from annoyed. “Oh. I’m sorry, I just…" He's still frowning, he's never been able to stomach not knowing better, "I never thought… We can stop.” 

But we can't. If this were a casual liaison, an affair to pass the time... If it was anyone else. But I can't give my brother a taste of this and take it away and expect no consequences. It might not even be intentional, but he'd retreat, he'd avoid me, and he wouldn't listen anymore. And Marcen would pay for it. 

I step forward and take his wrist. Then drag him to the settee, a conversation about this cannot possibly end well. He follows me willingly. Before we are even properly sitting, he is kissing me again. Except for my hold on him, it is just kissing, but there is nothing slow or sweet about it now. I put my other hand on his shoulder to keep my balance, and he returns the favour, and it’s fast enough to get lost into, not to analyse every touch because there are too many to analyse; and if I don’t think, if I just feel… His mouth on mine, his knee pressing against my side, the smooth skin of his back when I pull him to lie against me. I am ready for the weight of his body on mine but my pulse accelerates to the point where I have to tear my mouth away to gasp for air. Dzyer simply uses his mouth on my throat instead, breathing on my damp skin when I least expect it and making me shiver.  

Could he really be telling the truth regarding his inexperience? Could he really know to do this when he’s failed to have a regular lover? I daren’t ask how far his failed attempts went. At this moment, with one of his legs sliding between mine once again, finding the right spot to grind against my cock while he pushes his into the hollow of my right hip, I can’t say I even care. Once we are horizontal it’s over so fast I’m embarrassed at the intensity of it. If this is how it feels for men every time… it is little wonder they are so obsessed with their bodies to the detriment of their minds. A powerful lassitude overtakes me, and by the way Dzyer collapses half on top of me the moment it’s over, I know he is affected as well.  

Without the terror of the previous occasion, I find myself enjoying the adrenaline high that comes after intense physical activity combined with the sheer delight of orgasm. I wait for him to move, compose himself and pull away. But even when he gets up, he seems unable to tear his gaze away from me. I look down at myself, sticky with both his and my own spent. Shirtless but still wearing breeches and boots. I know that look but I have never received it while looking like this. It is deeply strange to think of this skin I own as attractive. Until now, I have just assumed the stronger muscles and extra height were meant to give me an advantage in the battlefield.  

He meets my eyes after a detour through every inch of exposed skin and only then I realise I have looked up to watch him watching me. I move back to recline against the side of the settee and his eyes don’t waver from me. There is something heady in commanding his attention without touch, without words, simply with my presence. He offers a hand and I take it, no questions, all my doubts pointless now; for what more do I have to lose after giving him this much? But he asks, “What do you want?” 

He takes a sit in front of me again, pressing his bent legs to my side. For a moment, I don’t know what he means, then I realise he is offering me something in exchange for staying. It’s like jumping on a freezing lake. I pull back, dazed by the realisation that for a moment I forgot why I am here. He loosens his hold, but refuses to let go of my wrist. I could yank my hand away if I truly wanted, but he wants me to know that he wishes for the opposite. He wants me to stay. 

“I want this,” he says, “I didn’t know what it would be like—” His throat contracts as he swallows. He meets my eyes, steeling himself. “Ask me.” 

He leaves out the ‘anything’ but I can’t help but hear it, it sounds like he would deny me nothing in this moment. I shake my head; I can’t believe he would expose his weakness this way when he’s given me so much reason to take advantage. Does he think me incapable of doing it? I am not, I already have, only to stop him from making a terrible mistake but nonetheless. Will he stop me if I go too far? When only my suffering was to pay for my stupid scheme; I felt certain enough that I was right and that I had an obligation to use the power I hold to do good. But am I doing good? Dzyer has been right in the past; what if I stop him from doing something that should be done? I have the training to understand politics better, but war is not my area of expertise and it is true that more information is always better but—  

The fact is that I was never meant to reign alone. I was never meant to _be_ alone, he was to be by my side and advise me. And if only I could advise him instead, it would not be so different to the way I expected our lives to go. I know we can succeed if we work together. I have been relying on his skills, not working on the ones he was developing because there seemed to be no point in knowing something well when I could ask Dzyer when the time came. If he does whatever I ask, we will avoid the mistakes he would make, but not the ones I would. I do not think myself perfect, and now I wonder if he has the strength to oppose me any longer. What is he ready to risk for this passion of his?  

 “What if I asked for my crown back?” I say. 

His hand tightens around mine for a second, then he seems about to let go, but he just gentles his hold again. He keeps his gaze lowered, but his voice is steady. “I would say no.” 

I don't touch him back, not now. Now, I must know. “Is that the limit?” 

He exhales, thumbs rubbing at the vulnerable skin of my inner wrists like it soothes him.  

“I did it because our queendom needed it. I still believe that. I won’t take it back. But I know you would do anything to help our country. There is not only one way to succeed: I am willing to listen to your way." Dzyer meets my gaze, and his face is flushed now. Is he embarrassed about what we did or about what he's revealed? "I am willing to try it if I think there’s a chance it will work and very little chance anybody will have to pay for it with their life. I will do things the hard way if it makes you happy.” He looks down at our linked hands. “Maybe it’s not enough.” 

It’s not what I want. I want him to listen because what I am saying is worth listening to. I don’t answer and he glances at my face and says, visibly overwrought. “That is all I have that is mine to give.” 

I look away, because I understand all too well. I also feel the weight of the crown on my shoulders--I would even if he had kicked me out and I wore no crown at all. Marcen can't afford for me to be tender, to indulge my feelings or his. “What if I want to go?” 

He lets go of me like I’m on fire, leaning away from me. “Do you?” 

“Can I?” I insist. He gets to his feet, like he needs the distance, like he wants to shield himself from my words. 

“Yes,” he agrees after a pause. “It’s been long enough for the sake of appearances.” 

I ask my next question thinking I know the answer. “What if I said 'no' to this?” 

Dzyer is braced for it now, but his exhalation is laborious. He is facing me still, I can feel the weight of his gaze, but I can't manage to meet his eyes. “I will ask you not to seek me out.” 

Not seeking him out implies no more council meetings, or at least no more private audiences like this one. Dzyer is letting me see his pain too clearly for me imagine it to be a punishment meant for me instead of a relief for himself. It would be, though. It would mean I would go back to being ignored, even worse than when Mother ruled; I would not even have the queen’s ear. Not just that, when Mother wouldn’t listen, I had Dzyer. Now, I would lose it all.  

I knew the answer all along, but now I know my suppositions were right. I cannot do my duty to Marcen unless I follow through with what I offered him. It is not such a big sacrifice; after all, queens always marry a convenient match. It is not like I could expect... But that is not really true: I could expect my brother to stay out of my bed. _My mother_ would have expected it, and any person I can think to ask. _I_ expected it. I only asked because deep down I thought it could be nothing but a moment of folly. But it is not, it is real. I do not know what to call Dzyer's feelings, but to him, they are worth giving me back the power I lost. 

This is exactly the reason love matches are not encouraged among the nobility: we have too much power to be swayed by our hearts, or instincts more basic still. 

“I have to go,” I say, standing without looking at him. 

He draws breath, but closes his mouth before he actually asks me again. He goes into his bedchamber, no sharp banging of doors this time, just him offering me some privacy to get dressed. He gave his word to stop at my say-so, and he has. 

I have been a princess and expected to become a queen my entire life, but I have never until this moment felt I had so much power over someone. Not even when I judged whether a criminal should live or die did I feel I could not simply kill someone with my words, but destroy them. Bring them so low that they would _want_ to die. 

 

*** 

 

I love Dzyer so dearly that contemplating that he is this vulnerable to anyone leaves me desperately afraid. I don’t know what to do with the fact that it’s me that holds his heart on the palm of my hand, that I have been carrying it around, casually keeping it in my pocket, unaware the whole time of what a precious thing I was possessor of. Of course I have hurt him; how could I not? I thought him my confessor, my closest friend, the only person I could ever truly speak truly to. And he held this secret for who knows how long. A secret he expected would turn my love to revulsion and lose him what little of me he did have. It is any wonder that a love too impossible to name would turn to bitterness? 

And I cannot return it. Not his feelings, but worse still, not his heart. I could, there is still time, whatever accident of fate made his childish admiration turn to... this. It could still be done. But I am not naïve enough to suppose this might be accomplished by simply denying him. He knew well my love was that of a sibling all along, after all. There could have been no hope, not when it turned to such anger that he would hurt me. 

 I know the joy I have offered him is merely the husk of what he seeks. But I love him, too. It is no less real because my love is that of a sibling. If anything, isn't my devotion the one that has never sagged? I have hurt him, I know, but only out of ignorance. _I_ did not betray his trust, _I_ did not lie; I have been loyal and steadfast and I have no else in the world who is even close to Dzyer in my heart. I never did, not even when both our parents lived. 

I cannot leave. No, I mustn't leave. It is clear as water that Dzyer will lead Marcen to war if I do. I could perhaps go abroad for a few months, or a year—I have before, when duty demanded it—but not if it means leaving my country to such devastation. Not if it means letting Dzyer destroy that which he holds dearest. If anything can justify what I am doing to us both, surely saving countless lives can. Except, even of that I’m not certain. What if I stay and I make no difference?  

The reason I was not finely trained in the martial arts is simple: my mother believed in words over swords. Better than any victory over an enemy is a victory with an enemy become your ally. A queen cannot be naïve enough to suppose that a treaty means friendship, but a shared purpose can bring you together with an enemy as well as with a friend, turn them into a temporary ally. And while allies require energy and attention, too, they do so at a much lesser degree. I negotiated the last treaty with Lambia personally, but after it was signed and I had discussed it with my mother; I left it to her to put the necessary measures in place. Now I get myself a copy of the treaty from the archives and read it front to back, making notes so that I can then go to Salaam for his help regarding how my mother satisfied each of the terms. 

 

*** 

 

The Lambians are an exceptional people among our neighbours, their royal line in particular. The original Royal line of shifters was lost centuries ago. And the loss was—from what one can glean from historical accounts—far from accidental. Afterwards, only those royals with no shifting ability were allowed to inherit, and so shifters either married into foreign royal lines or married down into the merchant class and stuck to one form for the rest of their lives.  

The story goes that the last shifter queen, Akilin, took the throne early after his mother’s dead in battle and did not get on with the other royals. He was a violent warrior while also refusing to marry any of her extended family to ensure a royal monarch remained in the palace while he was away in campaigns. Akilin insisted on his right to remain single, which, of course, did not stop him from taking lovers and bearing three healthy children, all shifters. Except for them, it seems nobody in his family liked his managing style, which included leaving his ten year old firstborn as regent during his 10 month siege of their northern neighbour. The Hagda Principality had had the temerity of letting their king reign after his queen, a shifter, had died in childbirth. A kingdom without a queen had been more than Queen Akilin could resist, even though Hagda was not a particularly succulent land.  

Meanwhile, young princess Alix had been skilfully led to become a playmate to his slightly older cousins. Although he was a child, his power as regent would allow him such liberties as marrying himself off to one of them if he so choose. The plot was set and, had Alix being less gullible or old enough for romance to really overtake his sense, his mother might have arrived to find his young heir effectively in the power of their relatives. But Alix was either too young or too shrewd; Akilin returned to discover the plot and exile the two young siblings playing with his daughter’s feelings.  

The failed marriage plot can be directly traced, through letters and diary entries, to the implementation of the assassination of Queen Akilin and his three children. The duke of Dartmoor—who could only hold power through her feeble shifter spouse—managed to convince most of the remaining royals, as well as a few military leaders, that a queen that was only a queen and did not interfere in the military would serve them much better. She put forward her own daughter as a perfect example of a sharp mind that had no interest in the field, Callicine of Dartmoor had been until the moment the disgrace of his mother’s house, being the eldest child and the only one not a shifter. But suddenly his father turned his biggest weakness into his strongest suit. Some records speak of the unfortunate incident in which the royal family perished—burned alive in one of their country properties—but it is almost impossible to believe it was the hand of fate when everyone hated Akilin as badly as they did. 

Queen Callicine was well educated and, through the timely dead of his father in the battles he could not participate in and the lessons of experience, became a good queen for Lambia. He married a non-shifter from the Marcenian line and, despite this had a shifter for a firstborn, who was trained in the military arts and removed from the line of succession, as were the male children that followed. Her youngest child was a daughter, who succeeded him to no opposition.  

Of course, he could have been a shifter, any of them could have been as long as they hated themselves for it and never let anybody find out.  

This marked lack of appreciation for shifters, as well as the barely disguised assassination of their rightful queen, has understandably left the Lambians with a rather poor reputation among the other royal lines of the continent. But of course Queen Akilin was a tyrant, and he also died hundreds of years ago. It would be absurd to judge the current Lambian government for it—after all, as it has been pointed out to me: no one may inherit the Marcenian throne if they cannot shift. 


	4. Chapter 4

#  Chapter four

 

I make myself walk down the hall to Dzyer’s room, feeling like I’m about to be sick from the internal pounding my heart is giving me. I have changed into a set of the male clothes he had made for me and their unfamiliar texture makes me aware of every inch of my skin.

An eternity seems to pass between my knock and Dzyer opening the door. He freezes when he sees me; so do I. He is in his male form and for a second I wonder if he did know I was coming; then I realise I'm being absurd. Dzyer always spend time shifted, he doesn't need a reason now.  He breaks the impasse, steps back and leaves the door open for me to follow. I close it behind me, not letting go of the support the handle offers.

I swallow until my mouth is dry before saying it, “I will stay.”

He doesn’t react, except that the lines of his back reveal a posture so rigid it must hurt.

“I don’t want to leave,” I admit.

Dzyer finally breaks his silence. “You don’t want to stay, either.”

“Yes, I do. I just told you.”

He turns at me and the strain on his body is nothing to that on his features. “You are simply afraid of leaving what you know.”

“I simply do not want to leave what I _love_.”

He recoils at that. “Is this part of your clever manipulation?”

That incenses me: I had more than enough opportunity for manipulation, instead, I offered him fair terms. “I have never attempted to trick you into anything!”

“You…” he growls. Then he stops, watching my face intently, “No, you didn’t, did you? I just wanted you to.”

“You wanted me to?” My brother’s sanity becomes more questionable by the minute.

He looks down. “I did it to you, didn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“If you did it back, we could call it even and forget about it.”

“Is that what you want? Forgiveness?”

“From you? Don’t you get it?” he asks with a pained smile, then laughs weakly. “From you, I want everything.” He looks down after that confession.

I don’t say yes. After all, one might only give what one it’s one’s to give. “I will stay with you.”

He turns away. For some reason I expected him to greet the news with happiness. Was this not what he asked me for? I watch him walk up to his bureau, open the drawer and eat a piece of koula. He has never liked the flavour so he must really feel the need for the relaxing effect.

“Dzyer?” I ask after the silence goes on for too long.

“You will stay as…”

I make myself say it, if I’m going to do it, I should certainly be able to say it, “I will share your bed.” This is the moment to make everything clear and there is something about this that is beyond me to bear. “I want control of your shifting.” He turns to me, looking tired but mostly confused so I add, “I want you to do it when I tell you to.”

“Ok,” he does not seem any less confused but his obvious unconcern while agreeing makes me think he doesn’t understand.

“Ok?”

“Yes… I mean, you are not going to ask me to shift in public. Other than that, it doesn’t matter to me.”

“How can it not matter?”

“It’s like…” He frowns, thoughtful. “It’s like standing or sitting down. It’s just a position. It doesn’t change anything important.”

I stare at him, thinking of the relief I feel every time I shift back into myself. How did he and I get to be so different in this? Is it just me that keeps thinking of herself as a woman who can shift? 

“If it matters to you, you can have it,” he adds.

“What about…” I start and have to swallow. My face is burning and my stomach is churning so strongly I feel like I’m going to be sick. I wave my hand weakly. “What we…”

“I will ask,” he hurries to explain. “I will stop if you tell me to stop.” Then he adds, earnest and clearly aware the currency of his word is not worth that much. “I _swear._ ”

And what a fool I am, to believe in the sincerity in his eyes. I nod.

“Just… Just promise me you will stay.”

“I just did.”

“Not forever, just promise me you will stay for… for…” He seems unable to decide on a timeframe.

I give it to him. “A year.”

He takes it like he needs it desperately. “A year, do you promise?”

“I promise I will stay for a year,” I repeat. And the dam breaks, his whole body seems to cave into itself and I realise the tension in him before was the only thing holding him back from me. He almost crashes into me, except he hugs me to himself and diffuses the energy by twirling me around.

He loosens his grip, still not letting go, and gives me a smile so dazzling that no one who has ever seen it could possibly forget it. I have seen it before; what I don’t remember is when. The realisation is painful enough to make me want to shut my eyes to it, his happiness now a stark reminder of its previous absence. But I look, I want to see it, I want to know it’s me causing it. I know I should be angry, but I’m so relieved to have him back. Truly and completely, like suddenly I’m getting enough air after years of deprivation.

It almost doesn’t feel like too high a price to tilt my face for his kiss, to open my mouth to be explored. He’s thrumming with energy: nervous, or sexual, or both; and my own body seems to have caught up because I’m shaking too. I kiss and kiss him and I don’t let him take over, he hesitates but not for long, then he is fighting me for control. And there we are again, against the door. Except that when I push a knee between his legs and then push him back against it, he goes, breaking away to let out an overwhelmed sound of pleasure. He lets me look my fill: My mind doubts, but my body knows.

 _Our_ bodies know. The need is evident in every caress: in the way his hands tangle in my hair, and his hips seek to be closer, and I can’t help but respond by trying to get closer myself. I don’t forget it’s wrong. I will not claim not to know, but I let myself go. Not because I have got to the point where I cannot help it, Dzyer has yet to do more than rub his leg against my groin, but because I want to. I want to enjoy it, I want to share this because I have chosen to give this, to him and to myself. I have paid my debts and I have done my duty; now I give myself permission to be happy. It’s only for a year, after all.

***

I wake up because I’m too warm, I think. At least, I’m too warm once I’m awake, and it’s no wonder, considering Dzyer is pressed so close alongside my back that no breeze can possible touch it. I shift, trying to disentangle myself and freeze when I realise parts of him are very much not drained enough for rest. It’s not like I haven’t touched his cock before, but my pulse still speeds up. I tug at his forearms, but his grip grows insistent instead of the opposite. How can he possibly have developed such a habit in the space of hours?

I shake his arm instead. “Wake up. I need to go.”

“No,” he mumbles, face half buried into my shoulder blade. I was right to assume he wasn’t asleep. “Stay.”

I stop trying to roll away and his hands loosen, the one free from my weight travels down to my hips and rubs against the prominent bone there before sliding into the dip and finding my cock, already at half mast. He moves his fingers lazily around it, the touch too light to satisfy but undeniably there. I push into his fist, wordlessly demanding more and he gives it to me, for a moment, at least, then his grip loosens again and I push back with my hips, intending to punish him but instead grinding my arse against him in a way that has him choking like I have punched him. He presses forward, slipping in the crease between my buttocks, slick and hot. I tense up both because of what the position suggests and because he chooses that moment to tighten his grip again. The sound I let out must be of dubious quality because Dzyer stills. “I’m not going to…” he starts, breathless and rough. “It’s just rubbing.”

I put my hand on top of his and encourage him to get on with it. He does. The silky slide against my balls interrupted only by the slightly tickling feeling of hair dragging against sensitive skin vaguely distracts me from the pressure of his hand on me. It’s both not enough and too much. I push my hips back, trying to get him to go faster, even as the slow speed seems to add to the pleasure in escalating fractions, to the point where I can see my orgasm coming from afar but feel helpless to either reach it faster or stop it.

Dzyer jerks against me, body arching impossibly close, and I feel the slick wetness of his release against my balls and the underside of my cock. It’s like being filled with energy, like he released it _into_ me, somehow. My every cell contracts in ecstasy and I find myself holding my breath to avoid falling to pieces.  

***

The Lambians have very strict divisions between the roles of the sexes, so of course they are horrified by the blurring lines created by our own Royal line’s ability to shift between roles. I think if it was just us, they could be more accepting, but you can't have your leaders be both male and female without it trickling down to the people.

Although female warriors are unsightly, it is not strange to occasionally run across a female smith or even a _man_ of letters. In Marcen, everybody wants to be a shifter because it links you the royal line. In Lambia, a baby who gives away the ability too early might end up drowned by his own parents.

In a way, I understood the Lambians all too well. Even among Marcenian nobles, it was clear that it was feminine skills that were required to rule. A queen who shifted too often was seen, at best, as acting outside his duties. In times of war, it was natural enough, but during the course of everyday life, there was no need for a general in a throne room to remind everyone of unsightly affairs such as war and death. Shifting was a gift, and one required to rule, although no firstborn for eight generations had been born without it and the last one had been a boy in any case. But shifting did not change the general superiority of females in our society. Among us, being male itself was threatening, for its only purpose outside procreation was violence.

And nobody should need to threaten less than a queen.

In a way being a woman would have been easier than spending all my time not being a man. For years, I had done exactly that. It seemed natural; after all, I had been born female . And even though I had shifted for the first time so early that I couldn’t remember a time before it; I had been encouraged from childhood to remain in my female form for propriety’s sake.

That is not to say that I always listened, I wasn’t an easy child and I had no qualms changing if it meant I could get an advantage over my playmates, but I was dutiful. I loved Marcen and I wanted to keep it safe. During state functions I would stand where I was told and greet the important visitors with my best reverences and courtesies until it got late enough that my carers would take me away to bed. The rest of the time, I acted like any other shifter child; I switched back and forth unthinkingly, even when the process started tearing my clothes and leaving me bruised up from it.

But as I grew, so did my responsibilities. I had never been particularly fond of sword fighting, but I had always enjoyed riding—but when my history, politics and language lessons grew longer, I found I no longer had the energy for them. I might have had two forms, but I only had one body, and even though I was young and healthy, all I craved after trying to learn another dynastic family by heart was the solitude and quiet of my quarters.

I couldn’t make more time, so I made excuses. I argued to be allowed to skip manly pursuits because they were not important for a princess, and since Dzyer continued to favour them, I argued that he'd be my general one day and there was no need for me to be able to lead our troops into battle myself.

For a long time being only female meant there were things I no longer could do. It meant I was safe from them and allowed some time to myself I desperately needed. For a time, that was enough. And then my Father died.

 Mother held strong but I could tell he was only just managing. At fifteen, I recruited Lady Saalam to convince the queen to let me attend minor functions in his stead. He'd not have done it for anyone else, but of course he loved Mother dearly and did his best to share his burdens. As  final step in my self-sacrificial downward spiral, I went to Lambia as ambassador because I knew it was a clear and unmistakeable gesture of trust. Dzyer had actually cried when I'd told him, and then he'd got so angry and—it became clear now—jealous that we'd ended up fighting.  

I was a natural diplomat, or perhaps I had lived with my Mother long enough to learn how to tell people what they wanted to hear. I was young, but I knew one thing: every good lie has a grain of truth in it. So I used my doubts about shifting to fuel an understanding with the Lambian Queen. The treaty had little to do with our feelings, since it was primarily a business contract regarding the importation of leavening agents that we cannot produce as easily in our colder climates and the expensive cloth they require in exchange. Of course, the importance of this business guaranteed, as much as the treaty itself, that we would both respect the borders and turn over any lawbreakers if they were found on the wrong side of them. But it mattered because it’s hard to get someone who finds you disgusting to sit at a table with you to negotiate anything.

For a long time, it had worked well enough, ambassadors and envoys had been sent back and forth with various gifts and well wishes, as well as correspondence of a general nature being exchanged between Queen Arra and myself. But when I casually inquired into the matter of border raiders, Queen Arra had claimed no knowledge of the attacks, something hard to believe even when they were rare occurrences in the past and almost impossible to swallow in the current situation. Queen Arra cannot possibly be in charge of his own borders and miss raiding parties crossing it almost daily into our side. But knowing him personally and having seen the ease with which he manages his court, it is hard for me to believe he might not be. Nonetheless, it still seems more likely than a queen that distrusts violence both for its own sake and because he cannot, as a woman, control it directly, suddenly deciding to initiate a conflict. A much simpler explanation is that whoever is in charge of their military is not trustworthy. It wouldn’t surprise me: the way in which noblemen are encouraged to avoid the profession pretty much ensures that the man in charge is not close to the Queen. There is nothing to disprove the theory and it opens up a number of possibilities worth considering, so I bring it up in council that morning.

“If you had met the Queen, you would know he hates violence,” I explain. “He can’t shift, so he thinks any military campaigns would give power to men and take it away from him. Even if it is Lambians... It is possible there is some kind of internal power struggle.”

“I am sorry, my queen,” Andrel says to Dzyer, instead of addressing me. This is made more shocking by the fact that since he entered puberty and officially became an adult, Andrel has been trying to cosy up to me. “But these are all mere speculations.”

I glare, but Dzyer waves him aside. “Even if it is the Lambians?” he asks me but answers himself. “If the Lambians are telling the truth and nobody is getting through their borders:  Why would only the land bordering theirs be under attack?”

 “What do the Lambians gain from breaking the treaty in this way when we will break ours with open war?” I insist.

“Cousin, your peaceful nature blinds you.” Andrel actually shakes his head at me! “Their Queen might gain little; but their generals would gain much.”

How do I miss the crown in this moment, imagining Andrel biting his tongue before suggesting I’m too _soft_. I ignore him and turn to Dzyer. “I just want your majesty to consider all the possibilities. This seems like a move too clumsy for the Lambians. Anybody can take advantage of a vulnerable border.”

Andrel opens his mouth and I glare at him. “ _Not_ because they are tempting. They shouldn’t be, protected as they are, but because they could precipitate this war.”

***

“You mustn’t let Andrel get to you,” Dzyer tells me, once the rest of the council has vacated the chambers. He had nodded to Lady Salaam to go ahead and Salaam had smiled at both of us, clearly pleased at what he must imagine is our sisterly reconciliation.

“I was not aware _I_ had let Andrel get to me,” I reply, curtly.

Dzyer doesn’t say anything for a moment. “Are you really bothered by it? I thought you were just surprised.”

“I’m insulted,” I say, before I think better of it, then I realise where we are and the implication of what I have said and my cheeks heat up. “I’m insulted he is here in the council,” I add, hopelessly. “That you would lend him your ear.”

Dzyer shrugs. “He is as capable as anybody, and he’s our family.”

“We pass the role of monarch through our family,” I say. “Anything else should be given to the most deserving person.”

Dzyer blinks at me, the idea is certainly not something I would have brought up with my mother but, now again, I never had to put up with Andrel in my mother’s councils. “Do you know of any deserving person who I should name to the council?”

“Don’t you?” I ask. “What about all your friends in the military? Are you telling me none of them are smart enough? They would surely provide in-depth knowledge of tactics.”

“They are men.” Dzyer says, like it’s obvious.

“And so what? If they are qualified, they would surely be better than Andrel, who is only stating the obvious.”

“You just don’t like him because he disagreed with you.”

“No, I disliked him way before that when he agreed with everything I said because I was going to be queen.”

“Alright, you simply dislike him. That is not a reason to kick him off the council,” It would be a perfectly acceptable reason if I were queen, but if I was, Andrel’s offer of assistance would have been summarily refused in the first place.

“What if I find someone better?” I ask and he hesitates. I lick my bottom lip, just trying it, just wondering, and it works. It startles him into looking into my eyes.

“I’m listening to you!” he grits out angrily.

“Are you? So why are you objecting? Is there a reason you want him around I am not aware of?”

“Yes. It’s a sensible reason,” Dzyer explains. “I want them happy and included enough that they don’t think of turning against me. Even with you here, many think what I did means I’m not truly the queen. Nobody is going to look for a replacement outside our family, though. If they are with me, if I secure their loyalty…” His reasoning is eminently sensible, but I’m more interested in the way he described us.

“ _I_?” I repeat. He cannot possibly be implying...

But his next words confirm my suspicions. “I know I don’t have yours,” he admits. “I know you are only here for Marcen. But…”

“ _You_ don’t have _my loyalty_?” The nerve of him to suggest such a thing! I have been nothing but loyal, beyond any duty of a sibling or a subject, beyond what is owed to his own poor imitation. “Don’t you mean I don’t have _yours_?”

“Nobody has mine,” he says calmly. “I don’t trust anybody to do things as well as I believe they should be done.”

“But I should trust you?”

“You can trust me to do what I have promised. Not because I’m loyal, because I want you to stay and I will do anything I can to make you want to. Beyond that, I don’t expect you to trust me. You are too intelligent to trust me. I appreciate that.”

“Because you are not trustworthy or because nobody is?”

“Because I took your throne from you and,” he swallows, glances away, “I hurt you. And I’m too fucked up to stop.”

“You are not hurting me. I am making my own decisions.”

“Are you?” he asks, sadly. “But I have left you with no other choices.”

I cannot insist on that after having offered what I have offered, an exchange in which my loyalty to my country has come before any loyalty I have to Dzyer. It doesn’t matter how pleasant it can feel for either of us; it will destroy any chance we ever had at getting past him becoming queen instead of me. It has already made it impossible for us to be siblings ever again. It still seems like a fair exchange: his pain, my pain; for peace. “My loyalty to Marcen is not yours to determine. I made my vows and I will keep them. It will be my decision every time I do it, and it will be on me if I decide to forego them.”

“But you said—”

I cut him off. “I was wrong.”

“What?” he asks.

“I did have a choice. It is not true. You did not threaten my life; you made it hard, you made it impossible for me to keep my vows. But vows aren’t magical anymore, I could have done it differently. When you decided to ignore my advice, I choose to make you listen the only way I knew how.”

“I’m listening now.” Dzyer says, after a long pause. Of course he is, I even believe he will continue to, as long as I keep giving him a reason to.

***

“…just ask the troops to transport the supplies,” Dzyer is saying when I walk in. This time I was told of the meeting, whoever decided on a time and day simply forgot to take into account my previous engagement to visit Ysidra. It is not something I can postpone or delay, Ysidra is where we breed our horses for the royal army and therefore of essential strategic importance. If it were taken, we’d be unable to form any new mounted regiments if the need arose or provide our existing ones with replacements. With weather as harsh as Marcen’s, the ability to travel fast can often mean the difference not just between victory and defeat but between life and death for the most remote of our settlements or camps.

So once a month, I personally supervise the state of their walls and general defensibility of their land. My skill with sword and mace might be lacking, but when it comes to noticing details there is, quite simply, nobody else I trust to do a good enough job. I have no choice but trust the people stationed to notice any disruptions in their routine that might presage danger, but there is no reason for me not to impress the supreme importance of their duties by personally supervising them. It has so far worked splendidly; in the two years I have been doing so I have never found anything worse than a rusted link of armour.

I do enjoy getting away from the castle. Ysidra is also one of my favourite places on Marcen, north of the capital, Platen, it sits on a plateau surrounded by difficult terrain, that is, difficult if you are not mounted on an Ysidrian horse. Bred to be both swift and sturdy, they can climb up or down at incredible speeds and traverse roads that would leave most other horses with a broken leg. But one does not take an Ysidrian mount for a leisurely stroll. My own was gifted to me not long before I gave up my war training, but I could never bear to part with her, and even if Mornings is a beauty, handling her has left me sweaty and in sore need of a bath. Not, to put it simply, in the mood to deal with Dzyer’s increasingly bold plans for our country.

“Supplies?” I inquire, taking a chair and signalling at Dzyer to push the water jug so I can serve myself a glass. Mother would not have been pleased to have me in his council rooms in such a state, but then again, I would not have felt the need to attend every single council meeting with Mother.

Lady Unira answers instead, surprising me with his approval. “Supplies for the southern provinces. They are low on fresh food after their crops failed.”

“Griira?” I ask. Dzyer nods, putting a full glass in front of me.

“Zubeka as well, they shared what they had with Griira,” he explains. “And having soldiers around takes its toll, too. Especially bored soldiers.”

That gets him a few smiles around the table, shocking me: Nobody smiled during Mother’s council meetings.

“But surely the soldiers are paying for that food?”

“They are, but they can’t be overcharged and that’s what they would need to do to be able to pay for food to be exported.”

“What about the soldiers’ rations?”

Andrel, unfortunately present, turns to grimace at me. “Cousin, soldiers cannot live on rations, only _survive_. To thrive, they must have fresh food, which is bought locally as long as they are in the country.”

After that put down, I decide to quietly sip at my water and absorb as much as I can. I remember Dzyer’s fierce defence of the south, his insistence that sending troops would only worsen the already unstable situation created by the failed crops and the attacks on border towns under the southern cities’ jurisdictions. But I don’t remember him offering such a simple solution: send them food as well as troops. Of course, I have seen the ledgers and I know exporting food is not cheap but still, these _are_ our people. These are Marcenian people, whom I have sworn to protect. The people Mother swore to protect, too. And when Dzyer is doing just that, what objections can I possibly make?

 


	5. Chapter 5

#  Chapter five

Dzyer is clearly surprised to find me in his quarters that night but does not dare object. He lets me move him around, easy with him unchanged, and push him against a wall to kiss him. But the moment our tongues tangle together, he snaps into action, clutching at my clothes and pressing against me with all the desperation of someone who has gone untouched for years, not hours. I thought I could be in control, but it doesn’t matter that I have physical strength on my side; I can’t compete with the force of his desire. He suddenly steps back, leaving me cold and looking like it pains him to do so. “Come with me?”

In his bed, where he leads me as fast as he can without ever stopping touching me, he pulls me to lie on top of him and raises his neck to seek my mouth instead of bringing me down. I lean forward anyway, wanting it enough not to care for making him beg for it. But even as sweet as his mouth is, I tense when my chest presses against the softness of his. I sit back and swallow. He is wild eyed and clearly waiting for an explanation.

“Can you…?” He blinks at me, not understanding and I huff. “Can you change?”

“Oh... Yes.” He tries to sit up and I have to clutch at his shoulders to avoid being upturned. “Sorry,” he mutters, and he is blushing. Now that I have brought it up, he suddenly seems as desperate to stop touching me as he was to be doing so a moment ago. I get off his lap and turn around, taking my shirt off. But when I turn back I realise Dzyer cannot get off his own dress without assistance. He has gotten over his shyness, at least, and moved right onto annoyed while he grapples with the first hooks high on his neck, arms awkwardly stretched behind his own back. “I’m burning this thing, I swear.”

I roll my eyes. “Just turn around.”

But it takes too long to unhook the back of the dress and it takes too much concentration to be casual; my hands know this from too many times in the past when Dzyer has run from his rooms into mine to be able to chat while we changed for a dreaded function. The combination of those memories and the sensitivity of my just kissed mouth prove too much for me. Because I cannot face what comes next I keep going and try to undo the three last hooks, unnecessary because Dzyer has lost weight since it was fitted and futile because my hands are shaking too much.

I pull back, my breathing ragged and my eyes stinging. “I--” My voice comes out high and thready. Dzyer only needs to steal a glance to understand something is wrong. He turns fully and raises a hand, meaning to offer comfort, but I step back from him. His touch has done too much else to ever be able to simply offer comfort again. He retreats, sitting back on the bed. His face is blank before he looks away from me. His tense shoulders are becoming a sight as familiar as his face.

“Please go,” he asks quietly.

 

***

 

The next time I see Dzyer, he is in male form. I think nothing of it, it’s just breakfast, after all, but then I see he has not changed for the afternoon meeting of the council. He nods at me when I take my seat, but is just an empty gesture, not meeting my eyes. He does not change for dinner in the hall either. Nobody mentions it, of course.

The next morning when I walk into the council chambers, he is wearing a particularly well cut blue shirt and his crown. The sight of a male with the Queen’s crown is quite odd, Dzyer’s thick mane is short enough in his female form, falling barely past his shoulders but with the added height, the loss of thickness and the plait he keeps it in this form, the crown looks too big on his head. I’m not the only one who finds it strange, but Dzyer acts like nothing is different from any other morning. Perhaps he even believes it.

“We have never caught any Lambians crossing over, have we?” Councillor Tyrias asks.

Dzyer shakes his head. “Only bandits. They confessed to crossing over from Lambia and they sounded like they were from the area, but…”

“We cannot possibly be taking the word of _bandits_ as fact,” Lady Unira interjects.

“We are not,” Dzyer replies. “But I do find it strange that all these outlaws are giving us the same story.”

“Are any of them refusing to talk?” Tyrias wants to know.

Dzyer snorts, and I cringe, unable not to imagine Mother’s reaction. When I glance around and realise all over again that he will never disapprove of Dzyer’s manner’s again, I feel even worse. “With the reduced sentences for confessing? No. They all sing pretty much the moment they understand their situation.”

“Is that the way they usually behave?” I check.

Andrel nods. “Criminals accused of non-capital crimes are cowards; it’s hard to make them talk about accomplices because they are afraid of revenge, but they have no problem admitting to what we already know they did.”

“What we already know?” I repeat, frowning at the wording, “How do they know what we know?”

“Well, they don’t,” Andrel says. “What they _think_ we know.”

“But then…” I start.

Dzyer finishes my thought. “We could convince them we know what’s going on. Maybe try and get some names.”

“It’s all very well to be clever,” Lady Unira comments sardonically. “But we actually do not know anything. That is not enough to trick them, no matter how stupid they are.”

“There’s at least three dozen bandits in custody,” Dzyer points out. “If we were to interrogate them one by one that would mean about three dozen chances for one of them to make a mistake and say something they shouldn’t.”

Lady Saalam chooses that moment to finally break his silence, “I do not see the harm in trying."

Various councillors nod at that, and Dzyer gives our mentor a brief smile. It makes me realise I’m smiling too, I can’t help it, finally something seems to make sense.

 

***

“How are you?” he asks me, when we are alone.

“Me? I’m fine.” I get right to the point. “Have you not shifted back in two days?”

“Back?” he asks, clearly bothered. “I haven’t shifted. I can’t shift _back_ , I wasn’t originally that and then turned into this. I’m a shifter; I’m both, all the time.” His voice gets calmer and more resolute with this last statement, his faith in this truth coming through loud and clear.

It isn’t true, though, Dzyer was born a girl, just as I was. But I do understand that it might seem that way to him. Like me, he started shifting very early, at around the same time he started walking and he probably doesn’t remember a time before it. I cannot.

Still, that is strange enough to give me pause. “I do take your meaning but normally, well, lately, you have mostly been female.” He raises a reproving eyebrow, as regal as he has ever been in his actual throne in a simple upholstered armchair. I’m on my feet, but looking down at him helps not one bit. “How do you want me to phrase it?” I ask, resigned.

He sighs, not tired but amused, “Lor, you asked me to.”

I gap. “I— do you mean—?”

He nods. “I told you I would shift when you asked. You asked me, I did,” he says slowly, like it should be obvious that he would take my request to be indefinite in time.

“But I didn’t ask you to stay like this,” I say, once again horrified at the lengths he is seemingly willing to go.

He shrugs. “You didn’t say and…” His façade of coolness seems to desert him. “You were really upset. I didn’t know what else to do to help.”

“And you weren’t,” I say, half-hoping he will contradict me.

But if he did, he would not need me to explain that it does not help for him to remain in this form. “Why would _I_ be upset?” he asks. “This was my idea.”

“Because I am your sister!” I shout, gripping the table between us for some support. “I have unhooked your clothes for you since we were little. And the other day I was…” I have to look away at the thought, it does not help at all that he looks different. My skin might be more easily deceived, but my eyes know his, and eyes don’t shift. “We were going to…”

“I’m sorry,” he says. But it’s too simple and he is not looking at me.

“What are you sorry for?” I demand.

“I’m sorry you felt that.”

“How can you not feel it?” And that is the real question. That has been the real question all along. How does he feel this is okay? I have come to understand why he would want it, but I don’t see how it could seem right to him, how he has no doubts about it when I’m plagued with them.

“I don’t know,” Dzyer admits, shifting onto his side. “I understand why it’s not a good idea, but I don’t remember ever feeling less than this.” He sounds defeated, like he has thought of this many a time. “I mean, I do remember what I felt for you before: being afraid in the dark and wanting you there, being mad about toys. But there isn’t a moment that I remember not loving you.” It’s said so simply, and I understand it so completely because I don’t remember such a moment, either. “And I just—that’s all. I just—since I remember thinking about—” he stops abruptly but I suddenly know what he was going to say. I stare; Dzyer’s cheeks grow redder.

What if I did something? What if somehow I pushed him into this? But how does one even do that without meaning to? Without feeling anything of the sort oneself? Dzyer puts his face in his hands and breathes deeply, clearly upset. I’m not sure what to say. I step back and retake my chair, needing the support and wanting to give him the space.

He doesn’t need me, though. “Well, there you have it,” he says briskly, taking his hands away and looking vaguely in my direction, like he’s thinking instead of intentionally not looking at me. “Do you remember that time I ran away to the forest?”

I do, he was thirteen and the whole castle had been frantically searching for him for hours before I had managed to track him with the help of his own dog. “Yes, Zera found you. You had been crying, but you wouldn’t tell me why.”

I had worried for more than the few hours it took to find him. Even after I had brought him back, he had been withdrawn and moody. But all my attempts at extracting the truth had done was upset him further. Eventually, my father had sat me down and asked me to stop. She had told me that Dzyer needed to grow up on his own, that I couldn’t always protect him, and because she was my father, I had listened. I had stopped, and then I had forgotten.   

“I asked you to dance with me and you said no.”

Of course I had, in a formal event like that we would both have been female. It would have looked absurd. Whatever shifters did in the privacy of their bedrooms, in public couples— even symbolic couples like dance partners—were shifted into opposite forms.

“Then you said yes to that poncy prince from Arraz.” He sounds amused, now. “That’s when I realised you didn’t want me back. That I was all alone with this.”

He looks down again.

 _Thirteen_ , my brain does the calculation automatically, like mathematics can save me from having to think about the sheer amount of time. It does not help. _Six years_. It most definitely does not help. Then I catch up with his words. _All alone_. That is the one thing Dzyer was never meant to be. But even if I knew how to tell him, Dzyer doesn’t give me time to.

He glances at me, uncertain but hopeful. “But you were enjoying it, before?”

I can feel my face heat up and I look away, shrugging. I can’t deny it, not when he’s seen incontrovertible proof.

He gets off his chair and comes to stand next to mine; he looks terribly young with his lopsided crown and intense expression. “I will be more careful, Lor.”

I look up from my lap, make myself meet his eyes and just say it, “You are not alone.”

His right hand moves towards me and stops, clenched at his side. “Can I just… Can I hold you?”

I take his hand and stand, bringing him closer to me with my own weight. He is considerably taller than me but I surround him with my arms and hug him tight, like I have done countless times before; so desperate to keep this that I can hardly bear it. He holds me back, fast and hard and shaking a little.

He might look different, but he smells the same. When I let go, I ask him to shift.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I admit I feel pretty odd that first novel I wrote as an adult--sorta--was a Thor/Loki inspired quite violent romance between two siblings. Please tell me if any of it works for you? :p If not, I blame Astolat, who recently got me into robots interfacing (Idek! I swear it was HOT)


	6. Chapter 6

#  Chapter six

 

A week passes and Dzyer gives no sign that he expects to see me outside of council meetings and meals. My spies have been dispatched but their first reports have not been of any use; the business of war goes slowly. But I am not overly concerned about the deadline he gave me. For starters, I know he has sent half his troops on a two-week mission to the eastern coast to assist with a flood. Andrel is still attending council meetings, though, which reminds me of the possible other candidates.

My brother seems surprised when I stay behind after everybody else has cleared out.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

I can see him swallow before he just nods. I realise he might imagine this to be a conversation of entirely a more personal nature. I forge on nonetheless, “I was thinking I should interview whoever you think would make a good addition to the council. Or well, more than one person, if you think…”

“What?” he says, confirming my suspicions.

I play the fool, and remind him, “You said you would consider it if they were better than Andrel.”

He shakes his head, as if to clear it, and shifts in his seat, leaning back so alleviate the strain of looking up at me. “That was long ago… I did not think you were serious.”

“I am,” I say. “Unless you object?”

“No, of course not,” he assures me and I freeze. Does he mean that he would not object because I have suggested it? “It’s a good idea,” he adds. “Even if only to add a new voice to the spy debate,” he gives me a weak smile.

I return it, “Thank you.” I have also grown weary of the entire thing. “Do you have somebody in mind?”

He takes a moment to consider it, “Tharis. Possibly Osal.”

“What are their family names? I will have a servant fetch them,” I get some writing materials from the table and take a seat opposite him.

“Soldiers are not identified by their family name, Lor,” he corrects me. “Tharis is away, but Osal belongs to the 3rd regiment.”

I fill that away for later, “Why are they not identified by their family name?”

“It would interfere with rank and comradeship. All soldiers are the same, unless they _earn_ a promotion.”

He seems strangely proud of this, for someone to whom it doesn’t apply. “Except you.”

I only mean to tease, but he gets angry. “I am not in the military anymore,” he says, standing up abruptly and turning his back to me. “I can’t be, beyond my role as Queen. I named Eshal of the 5th General Commander of the Royal Forces.”

If he imagines he will earn my compassion for that, when he’s been endangering his life against my advice for _years_ and has taken my own role against my will, leaving me in a position that is as good as useless in terms of what I can accomplish... Well, he is sorely mistaken. “Good. I’m glad to hear that. I am sure she will do an excellent job.”

“ _He._ Eshal is a shifter,” he shots back, calm as you like, concentrating on whatever is outside the window with intensity I would only dedicate to meditation.

This surprises me enough that I forget to be bitter. “I don’t know that name, which branch of the family...?”

“He is not family.”

“Do you mean he got the blood from a foreign shifter?”

He looks at me then, anger’s gone from his face, but his words are far from pleasant. “I mean that there are many shifters that cannot trace their heritage to the royal lines. We might not be allowed to sleep around, but that doesn’t stop the cousins.”

“Yes, but many?” I insist.

“I did tell you that you did not know our people as well as you should,” he replies with a superior air.

“Oh,” I snarl, reclining further on my armchair instead of giving any credibility to his insults by getting up. “I know there are shifters that aren’t noble. I wasn’t born yesterday. I am simply not aware they are that numerous. I don’t see how that would stop me from governing well, in any case. What is fair for one, it’s fair for many.”

“The laws need to fit the citizens and their needs. What one needs is not what many need,” Dzyer answers, intent. “And most non-royal shifters? They are forced to choose a form when they reach adulthood. They choose to be women, for the most part,” he says with anger.

“What is wrong with choosing to be women?” I demand, sitting up.

“There is no need to choose! The whole point of being a shifter is _not_ having to choose!” And there goes another conversation turned into a fight, but it’s on his side that the disagreement started, considering he knows my personal stance on the matter.

“Not choosing _is_ a choice,” I point out as calmly as I can. My voice comes out well enough by my pulse is racing with the effort. “You choose to shift, they choose not to. What right do you have to judge?”

“They are not choosing to stay women forever, they are being asked to do it by others. Don’t you see? Our own people are starting to believe shifting is wrong,” he is so focused on me, it becomes impossible to ignore that he is speaking of me, as well.

“It feels that way,” I say, giving in. I can’t explain why it does, though. I have read the journals of past queens, I know it was not always the case that half of your self was to be looked down upon. But what can one argue with feelings? Dzyer is certainly not arguing with his.

“Because we are told it should! The same way we are told that men are not meant to rule!”

His voice is higher than normal, and he is slightly out of breath with agitation. “But men did rule, once, and they did things that took intelligence. And women had more freedom, too. Men are said to be inferior but women are limited as well.” This isn’t news, I know that men ministers and scholars were not exceptions in the centuries preceding our own, and neither were women who chose to pursue sporting careers or even ascend in the armed forces.

“And we…” he continues. “We are so _fortunate_ not to be limited by nature, and these people are turning that into a _problem_. It’s our gift. We govern because we might understand each and every citizen, whatever their sex, from our own experience. So what good are we if we don’t shift?”

And here, Dzyer loses me, for, once again, I have read too much not to know this argument well. “But are you a man?”

“Of course not,” he says.

I nod. “A woman?”

“No!”

“Then do you really understand either?” I ask, gaining in confidence now that I’m not directly the topic of conversation. Logic I can do, logic nobody can do like me. “I have been told not to change and I have listened. For years, I didn’t even remember there was more to me. But you asked me and sometimes it felt better not to be myself. To have a little distance.” His touch comes back to me then, the shift of skin on skin and it does not matter it was not the skin I wear now. I shiver and make myself resume my explanation, “I have seen now the way in which people will look at men when they do not know them. I have been _looked_ at that way. After going out as a man, I come home and when I change; I know I’m safe. But then Sora came in with my bathwater and I realised... Sora could never get that, would never get a reprieve from the stares and vigilance.” I meet his eyes to make sure he is listening. “A man does not have that choice, a man must wake up the next day and bear it again and the day after, no respite...”

“But..” He seems stunned. “But you choose not to shift.”

“What’s that got to do with anything?”

“You see how bad the separation is, why are you dividing yourself?”

“I see how bad being a _man_ is. I don’t feel safe, not when I am shifted outside anyway. It’s too hard to worry so much about everything I do, and whether someone will take offence.”

Dzyer lets out a noise at that and only then I realise I have confessed a little too far. I have been too long in the habit of being honest with him and now I _have_ given offence.

I stand, intending to retreat but Dzyer steps back himself, not pulling away but making himself smaller. I think he would go as far as shifting weren’t the issue so charged. He stares for a moment and then takes a different chair, one slightly turned away from mine. He would look pensive if not for his hands, clenching the arms. I don’t know what to say but I don’t dare go without something else _being_ said, he finally speaks, “Don’t lie to me.”

“Lie?” I’m so confused I actually sit back down.

“You said you only shifted when you felt safe,” he says. “I’m the only person who has hurt...” he stops and turns to look at me, hands going lax. “Has somebody...? What happened?”

“Nothing happened!” I reply, indignant. “I might not be a soldier, but I am not helpless!”

“Why do you not feel safe being a man outside?”

“Just... the looks. People don’t know me in that form, they treat me like they would any male. It’s probably never happened to you, but I get glares from women who think I should get off their path, or that I’m not being ‘polite’ enough when I’m being just as polite as I always am.” I sigh. “Have you noticed people don’t respect your personal space? Nobody is _trying_ to touch me, but they stop making an effort not to do it by accident.”

Dzyer nods and repeats the old maxim with weary resignation, “Men are supposed to make sure the extra space they take doesn’t make them cumbersome to others.” Then he frowns. “I want to know why you said that.”

I sigh, and allow myself to look down as I explain, “You know me. You don’t care what I look like. It doesn’t matter if I shift.” The more we speak of the matter, the clearer that becomes. “With them, it’s the only thing that matters, and I can’t predict what they will do because I don’t know them and what they do makes no sense at all to me.” I glance at him. “Not that all your actions are an exemplification of logic.”

“So you are _never_ safe with me,” Dzyer says, unjustifiably hurt for someone who told me I shouldn’t trust him not so long ago. “Is that what you are saying? Then why are you here right now? Shouldn’t you stay away? Stay outside as a woman?”

“Who said I want to be safe?” I would like to be, of course, but not more than I would like to be respected, and loved, and trusted. Not more than I would like to be safe because I can _make_ myself safe. I know now that is the only safety that is real, but just because I’m afraid it does not mean I will choose to act so. “I want to be useful, I want to protect my people. And being a man is not safe, but being the heir to the throne has never been. At least when I’m a man nobody is pretending to like me.”

Dzyer misinterprets that in his usual self-centred fashion. “I’m not pretending. Not about that, and not about your safety.” I open my mouth but he stops me with a raised hand. “I will prove it to you.”

My impulse to contradict him dies down. I _want_ that. I want him to prove it. I want to feel safe around him. I wonder if maybe one day it will come naturally again, without any of this reluctance, without the second guessing his presence triggers in the depths of my mind and no conscious admonitions seem able to silence.

***

Sora freezes in the middle of braiding my hair back the next morning. For a moment I keep talking about the Tziadic queen, then I realise her hands are unmoving, “Sora?”

“You have another mark,” she whispers.

I flinch but don’t try to turn my head, it takes her hours to get my hair circled properly and it would be useless in any case, since I could not even see the mark she speaks of in the mirror. “It is not…” I trail off, unsure what to say. Sora is my servant, but she is also my friend, something I had not realised before the rebellion despite all her small kindnesses, something I am trying to honour now. I can feel her pulling my hair onto my opposite shoulder and I don’t object or pull away, maybe if she can see, I won’t have to explain.

The positioning must finally make it clear that was the result of a passion very different from anger. “Oh,” she says, letting go of my hair so that it brushes down my back. “It’s…”

I chuckle, uncomfortable and so grateful I am not facing her. “Yes.”

“I am sorry, milady, it is none…”

I cut her off, soft but firm. “I appreciate your concern. You can ask me; if I don’t wish to tell you, I will say so.”

I can feel her hesitantly start braiding again. “Well, it’s only that… I have not seen anybody.”

“I have not been bringing them back here,” I say, simply and truthfully.

“It is good to have someone,” she comments, vaguely. “I wish I did.”

There’s a sadness to her tone that I can’t ignore. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s so worried about me that she’d risk offending me, but if I am to be honest, it is probably about me. Or not about me, it’s probably that now that I have shifted again I can see how different wanting to have someone must be for a man. “What is it like? I can’t imagine having to wait for women to notice you.”

“It isn’t quite… a man can hint,” she explain. “And dress up, and smiling is okay.”

“But you cannot say anything.”

“Not if I want them to think well of me,” she admits. “If I say anything they might be frightened, or think I have no self-control or...” She trails off.

“I have been shifting, lately,” I confess, for a confession is exactly what it feels like.

“Oh, I noticed the new clothes were being used, but I assumed it was just for official business with…” she stops herself, clearly rephrasing with the great skill of servants at over-politeness, “Your highness’ sister.”

I almost laugh, most of the time when my male attire needs washing, it is because of Dzyer, after all. “Sometimes I go out. People don’t know it’s me.”

“And it isn’t, is it?” she asks. “Milady might wear a mask but the mask is not her.”

“A mask…” I sigh.

“I mean no offense, of course," she adds at once. "That is the way you described it once, years ago, like something you could put on and take off. Something you wished you could discard.”

“I sometimes wished I could but now… Now I think I am glad I couldn’t. I would never know what life is like for you if I had. I would never understand the constraints you are under when you are out in the world.”

Sora is silent for a long moment.

“That is why I like to serve my lady,” she says. “My lady never remembers I cannot shift, she only sees me as a person who is in one of her forms.”

“You are,” I say. It's true. I have grown up surrounded by shifters to the point where in the back of my mind, I tend to assume everybody is capable of it. I have never needed proof that someone could, only that someone couldn't.

“Yes,” she agrees. “But everybody else will just see the form I’m in, that is the way the world works outside.”

“I tried to explain it to Dzyer and he asked me why I didn’t go outside as a woman instead.”

Sora takes my hand and makes me grasp the strand she wants me to hold. “It seems like a fair question.”

“I want to know,” I admit. “It hurts, but it feels like I am seeing the world as it really is for the first time.” 

She stills for a moment too long, then tells me. “The world isn’t only one way; the way it is for women is real, too.”

“Yes, I know. But reality is… reality is made of many parts. Truth is complex. And before everything was obvious, but _now_ I am finding the cracks, the contradictions; and it’s offensive and sometimes…” I take a deep breath. “Sometimes I’m scared.”

Sora hums, apparently unshocked by this. “You are wise to be, milady. It isn’t safe.”

She says it calmly, without hesitating in the twisting of her fingers that pulls slightly at my scalp. She says it like it’s no revelation at all but a matter of course; and that, in itself, is the revelation. This is what normal is.

***

“I can’t believe Mother appointed Lichen to Lambia,” Dzyer grumbles, flipping through the pages of gossip that make up the ambassador’s letter.

I sigh. “You know who his mother is,” I say, reclining back onto my seat. Dzyer’s tone makes it clear that he does not intend to suffer the rest of the letter in silence and it is more expedient to get his rant over with than to get him going about me not listening to him.

“I know what nepotism is,” he replies. “Just because they were friends…”

I snort. “Don’t be ridiculous. Lady Claar owns most of Marcen’s trading ships. Mother wasn’t doing a favour for a friend but for a powerful ally,” I say. Thinking of Lady Claar as our ally reminds me of the last time I thought of him that way, though, when I needed him so badly and he was on a trading expedition so far East not even the largest of birds could have reached him on time. I still wonder, was it really Dzyer that sent Claar away at the pivotal moment? Or was it a coincidence that the woman who commands the second largest armed force in the country was away from his home city, itself barely a day’s ride from Platen?

“That’s what nepotism is,” Dzyer points out, but his tone makes it clear he’s arguing for the sake of it.

“Nepotism would have been if she had sent Cousin Yber,” I respond, trying to distract us both.

Dzyer smiles, a mischievous light on his eyes I know well, “That would have been _mercy_.”

“The ambassador isn’t doing much good, it’s true, but that’s why we sent him a good assistant.”

“I don’t see much good being done in Lambia by anybody. We are considering war!”

“You can’t really expect someone trying to do diplomacy through someone else, someone as… inefficient as Lady Lambeth especially, to do things well and in a timely fashion. Mother chose Greene personally for the job and he’s never given us reason to doubt him.”

Dzyer’s mouth twists unhappily.

“Unless you really think not being a shifter is enough to mark someone as untrustworthy?” I ask, casually but intent.

He backs off at that. “No, of course not. I just do not like how slowly things are progressing.”

“Neither do I, but patience is a virtue.”

“Are you going to repeat every single one of Mother’s maxims to me?” he asks with a grimace. “Are you trying to put me off?”

“Put you off what?” I ask, almost defiantly. I don’t mean to provoke him, but once I have I do not expect to see him retreat instead.

Dzyer swallows visibly. “My dinner. It’s almost time. Excuse me, I need to freshen up.” And with that, he’s out the door. I stare after him, stunned into immobility. Is this the proof he promised? Is this him trying to earn my trust? I said yes once, but I do not think I could ask. If he expects me to initiate… we are both going to be waiting for a long time: Dzyer for me in his bed, and I for his attention outside of it. It is almost enough to put _me_ off my dinner, but I made myself change and attend the hall to dine with the council and some visiting nobles from Tziar. None of them would speak ill of their Queen directly, but many a tale might be told without mentioning their monarch by name that will get even the noblest of tables roaring with laugher.

***

Dzyer does not even look my way during the meal, too busy encouraging Lady Amira of Tziar to retell one of the older stories about ‘a person of their acquaintance’. All the stories about Queen Yar of Tziar, although unquestionably amusing, have also got me thinking: Would her own family arrange for an external conflict such as a war between Tziar’s two closest neighbours to get her out of the castle long enough for them to deal with the consequences of his hare-brained schemes? Having Dzyer as Queen is difficult, he is too young and stubborn by half, but I pity the Tziadic for their Queen. From what they tell his behaviour frequently crosses the line between extravagant and erratic and they are left to deal with the fallout.

Of course, maybe Queen Yar is too erratic for anybody to _plan_ anything, and there is always Lambia itself and their well-known hatred of our culture and shifters. But I truly believe my efforts with Queen Arra have counteracted that at least enough to avoid an open conflict. I make a note to ask Saalam’s opinion, after all, it might be arrogance on my part that makes me feel so certain. Or even worse, it might well be that my overconfidence is being used by my enemies to fool me.

I am working some further options into the list of those who would benefit from a war with Lambia when a knock interrupts me. If I stop now, I will probably have to read over it from the beginning if I want to avoid repeating myself. But, even though Sora would be more likely, I know it’s Dzyer before I even ask him to come in.

He opens the door slowly and steps in even more reluctantly. “Are you busy?”

I look down. “Not productively,” I admit.

“Would you come tonight?” he asks, eyes downcast. It’s almost a relief to stop wondering about it.

“Yes.”

He doesn’t move from my doorway. I wonder if he means immediately, then I realise it does not matter; I am not going to be able to think of warfare knowing what is coming, “I will come as soon as I change.”

He looks up, nods. “Of course. Take as long as you need.” He turns and disappears down the corridor, completely forgetting about my door.

It takes me a while to summon a servant to get me out of my dress, and then I’m nervous enough that I delay myself by finding a furred cape to wrap myself up in the cold hallways, even though the one that separates our quarters is not five and ten feet long.

I knock softly on his door, too softly to be heard if I’m to judge, but he is there in an instant. He is still shifted into male form, but any relief that might bring is counteracted by the fact that he is only wearing a loose tunic to cover himself. He smiles when he sees me, tentative but happy, like someone holding something precious but aware of how fragile it is. He holds a hand out and I let the door close behind me. His hand is slightly larger than mine, and has considerably more calluses. It seems strange that I know him so well and I never noticed. Except it is clearly not strange that he has avoided touching me for so long if this is what touching me means to him. He waits for me, watching me like that’s all he intends to do, his eyes roam my face and take me in. I step closer, interrupting a scrutiny that feels almost more intimate than touch, and he lets me bend his arm against his body, adjusts his gaze to follow mine.

_What if I stop now?_ I think, right up until the moment I lean forward and put my lips to his cheek. The answering shiver that runs through him seems to quieten the voice. Or perhaps it is the same voice, asking: _What if I don’t stop?_ What will he do when I put my free hand on his neck and bring his mouth down to mine? If I nibble at his lower lip and soothe it with my tongue? He trembles. His mouth opens to me but I don’t accept the invitation, not wanting to miss the sounds of pleasure that pour out of his throat. I move on to his neck, the raised Adam’s apple bobbing desperately under my tongue, the scratchy hair that has had time to grow since he last shifted. His shaking intensifies, but he doesn’t touch me. I run my nose along it, then my tongue, tasting salt and taking in the smell of him, so familiar it makes my heart stutter in my chest.

I pull my hand free from his and flick my fingers against his nipple. Dzyer actually stumbles, gasping like I've struck him. I have to transfer both hands to his sides to stabilize him and when I look up I see his pupils are blown wide, and he’s panting so hard I fear he will grow dizzy. He catches me watching, nods and presses his lips together. But he can’t last, not with the way his chest is rising and falling. He breaks into a breathless whisper, “Can I touch you?”

“Yes,” I tell him once again.

He actually smiles at that, relief written starkly on his face. His body comes to mine like the pull and push of muscles, inevitable and perfect, and my body cannot do anything but respond. My right leg ends up between his and I put my arms around his shoulders to make up for the slight height difference, pressing my cock against him as he does the same. But it is his mouth that feels, once again, like a revelation. I have been kissed plenty but nobody has made me feel like my mouth is a priceless artefact: every detail to be honoured and appreciated, precious enough to revisit time and time again.

I bite him to hurry him up. His tongue withdraws and he kisses me fast and shallow, his tongue tracing my teeth, but making my tongue chase after it before it agrees to be tangled with. I suck on it, wanting the taste of him in my mouth, wanting to take what he is giving. He clutches back at me, hard enough I wiggle my hips to try and make him loosen up. It takes a slap on the back of his hand before he gets the message but I can still feel his grip like a bruise. His hands move to trace my shoulder blades but their previous hold is still heavy with their presence so that he is somehow enveloping me into a multitude of embraces. I squirm against him, both needing the pressure and pained by the intensity of it. Maybe in an attempt to please me Dzyer suddenly lowers his hands to my buttocks and pulls me hard against him while bringing his own hips forward. I bite his lip hard enough that the bitter flavour of blood invades my mouth, but it still takes me a moment to pull back, “Sorry!”

The blood is welling up on his lip, but it’s his tongue licking it clean that makes my gut clench. He is looking at me so intently I daren’t look away. I wonder if my gaze is all the holds him in place.

“Does it hurt?”

He huffs a laugh, like the notion is absurd. “I don’t think anything can hurt right now.”

His smile makes the cut bleed a little more; my eyes follow his tongue cleaning it once again. I can’t think of a single thing to say. Dzyer pulls at my hand and indicates the bedroom with his head. I nod, suddenly feeling like I need to avoid sudden movements if I want to stay in control of my own oversensitized body.

I’m glad he doesn’t try to touch me, instead waiting for me to make my way to him. He takes a seat on the bed and watches me with eyes not so familiar now that the brown is overwhelmed by the black of the pupil. I know those eyes well but I have never seen them look at me this way. No, that’s not true; I remember telling a story or reading it and being gifted with his absolute attention. But I’m not a book now, just me, and that look cannot be anything but adoration. Making myself take yet another step closer feels like preparing to jump into a freezing lake at the height of summer, desired but feared. My skin so overheated, it’s ultimately inevitable. I tense when I settle between his parted legs and finally, putting my arms around his shoulders, lean on him, let my head fall forward and ask, “Just touch me.”

And he understands. His arms surround me and he scoots back on the bed to bring me onto it, onto him. And I only need to go, no more deciding what to do, no more analysing the implications. His lips find mine once again and it’s not teasing anymore, it’s devouring, his teeth holding my bottom lip to keep my mouth in range one moment and his tongue dipping in, caressing my palate and inviting my own tongue to play the next. His hands return to my buttocks only to slide back up under my shirt to fight a willing struggle with the muscles of my back when they try to get closer to them and he tries to get me closer to him. He hooks a leg behind my thigh to force me to give up the partial verticality that separates us. When our bodies make full contact, knees to shoulders, I catch myself on his shoulders, shuddering with pleasure so intense half of me is tempted to roll away to stop myself from coming and the other half just wants to chase it to the end. Dzyer whimpers and I drink the sound down, I can feel the sound travelling up his throat as I kiss it, the same pleasure it announces rolling in waves through tensed muscles. He rolls me over easily and his weight helps to settle my nerves. I’m trapped. Even if I’m certain he would let go in an instant, that’s what my legs under his and my wrists pinned by his hands tell the part of me who insists this is not what I want: I’m trapped and I can stop struggling. Dzyer stays like that, watching me for long enough that I start to blush, I squirm in his grip and he cannot repress a groan when my leg pushes against his cock. But he gets the message, he lets my hands go and sits back on my legs, heavy enough to pin me without needing to try. He unbuttons my shirt too slowly even for someone who has only occasionally done it to other people, and I glare at him, bringing my hands up to help him along. He catches my wrists again, his hands settling there like they belong.

“Please let me.”

I gape. _Let him?_ I _am_ letting him. I put my hands back on the bed and he gives me a smile. I look away from his face, full of a wonder I cannot explain at the sole sight of my skin; but that only leaves me with the almost ghostly contact of his fingers and the feel of his thighs bracketing my hips, his solid weight on my hard cock, almost worse for the small shifts the movements of his arms require than it would be completely still. By the time the buttons are undone and he slides the shirt off my chest, my breathing has gone ragged.

When I feel his weight retreat, I turn to him and he pulls me upright until I’m sitting against the headboard.

“Lift your arms,” he asks and gently pulls the fabric over my head first when I do. When I can see again, he is actually _folding_ my shirt. I stare, torn between laughing and shouting at him for it. Is this him trying to prove that I am safe? He has been leaving his clothes strewn about his quarters all his life, even expensive ceremonial robes; but he can be careful with mine? With me? He turns to me again and pushes himself closer, his mouth meeting mine fast and desperate, as if a few seconds separation were unbearable. I kiss him back, because somehow, they were. Our chests slide together, his tunic silky against my pebbled nipples. He pulls back and watches my face for a moment and that’s when I know: not that I’m safe, that he loves me. I don’t tell him how useless an attempt it is, how little doubt I harbour as to his feelings, both pure and sexual. I don’t try to explain that it is not even a case of my own affection not being true, that it’s my trust that he must earn. 

From his position he leans over to the bedside table and retrieves a jar of clear oil. He sets it on the bed and puts his hands on the hem of his tunic in silent question.

“Take it off,” I say, already lamenting he did not do so before. Even though it’s necessary, I immediately regret when he needs to get off me to do it, my trousers are wool but I’m still suddenly chilled. He is naked under it. I feel my mouth dry out, half in paralyzing fear, half in… I turn my face away, feeling like I’m tearing something with that slight movement.

“Should I?” Dzyer sounds worried now.

“No,” I say firmly, mostly to him.

“Ok,” he crawls closer, catches my hand. My breath stutters out but is almost instinctive to reach out to touch him. I’m not looking so my hand lands on his arm instead of his chest, my knuckles bumping onto his bicep before I readjust. His skin feels better than the silk, warm like only something alive ever gets, and before I know it, I’m closing my eyes and letting my hands roam.

Dzyer hisses out and for a moment, his own hands slacken on my hips, but after I put my hands to his waist and bring him back onto my lap, his hesitation recedes and his hands are suddenly on me, exploring my naked back and chest like he needs to sculpt it anew. When I grab hold of his neck to keep his mouth from wondering away, he rolls us over, ending on his back. I don’t care, as long as he doesn’t stop kissing me back, but a moment later I find myself on my back again and realise he was trying to get me out of my sitting position. That gives me pause, I’m suddenly under him again and he is naked and his cock is not being shy about the reason why. Dzyer takes advantage of my distraction, lifting his head and finding the oil again. He's flushed and trembling slightly—I cannot be sure if it is excitement or dear.

“Would you...? Can we...?”

He shifts on top of me, pressing onto the aching hardness of my groin and making any relief seem marvellous. I have never been taken before, but the feel of his hands have convinced me of its probable merits. It does not even mean submission, not really, not when he has nothing to take _with_.

I nod, eyes lowered because although I’m agreeing, I want it to be between our bodies alone that this happens. I don’t want to look into his eyes tomorrow and feel this has changed us. He tugs my trousers down and then realises I’m wearing sandals and huffs in frustration. Even so he does not rush, undoing the clasps with patience and massaging my ankles for a few moments after he’s rid my feet of them. I stay and I let him, grateful for his intentions but uncomfortable with the delay. He dips his fingers in the oil and when he wraps them around my cock; I scream. When I manage to open my eyes he’s smiling down at me and raised on his knees to reach behind himself. He might have agreed to both of us staying male in bed but he is going to take the dominant position, as close to female as possible. I should be threatened, but I want to stay as far away from myself, from Dzyer’s sister, as humanly possible. I want _him_ as far away as possible.

It is madness, I know, but it is like I can only allow this to bloom between us if I do not have to face it with the part of my mind that knows reason and knows rightness. 

I barely have time to become aware of his weight on my lap when I feel the pressure of his grip on the tip of my cock. It is only then that I realise I have never done this before—never having taken a lover as a male—and it is so overwhelming that I almost buck up into him, an unforgivable faux pas. I can ask him to stop, but taking over the lovemaking physically… I let out a grunt, instead, my thighs and stomach trembling with the effort it takes not to move. Slowly, so slowly it’s as much torture as ecstasy, he lowers himself, enveloping me with his body, warm and overpowering until he has me clasped between his thighs, strong muscles flexing around me sending waves of pleasure racing up from the point where we are joined. I think I make some kind of choked sound, my mind certainly feels like the world has narrowed to the unspeakable pressure on my groin. Dzyer pulls himself up, pulling on my sensitive skin, knees flexing against my sides a little harder than I could wish. Then he pushes back down so fast that I jump, raising my hips to press back onto his buttocks. I’m once again in his grip, unable to stop myself from straining closer to the source of the electrifying fire that builds up, too slow for release and too fast to be stopped. He leans forward and finds my mouth, my neck, my chest, his cock leaving a wet trail where it slides against my belly. When his nails accidentally scrap against my left nipple while he has me halfway captured, I jerk and his legs give, finishing the stroke, my hips and his buttocks connecting with a painful thud that pushes me over the edge. He whimpers, obviously feeling it and I arch into him, pushing against both his weight and his cock even as Dzyer lets out a grunt and clutches at it, spilling himself between us even as I’m still spilling inside him.

My seed is his. He cannot, in his current form, use it for much but... As I lay there, stunned, my mind seems unable to process anything but the sensations of my body. Even if the act in identical shapes is only a pale imitation of the sex of a real coupling, it feels different than just helping him achieve release. It feels definite, it feels like a promise that I do not know if I wanted to give. I’m about to ask him to move when he struggles up, a little whimper escaping him as his body frees me. He drops off next to me. I feel a pull at my groin, where the wetness is starting to grow cold and sticky, and some strange regret that I banish. What is done, it’s done. 

**Author's Note:**

> I am editing and re-reading this after 3 years and I did notice that the characters' reactions are not always what I would have expected. I have attempted to address this with my edit, but I'd *love* some feedback regarding the dynamics specifically. Please tell me what you think!


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